The whole Corinthian incident shows that Jews are not always the problem. Most of what was wrong in Corinth was the direct result of pagan Gentile culture following people into the church. Jews were not the problem in Corinth. It was the Gentiles with highly rational Hellenism. I cannot do better than my previous commentary on this:

In the entire Bible, there is no statement so blunt, so patently obvious as this one in rejecting the importance of human reasoning and logic in understanding spiritual truth. Lest anyone forget, Paul wrote this to a congregation that came out of a Hellenist intellectual background, either of the Jewish brand, or the original Greek. Short of using the term “Aristotelian” itself, how can he not be addressing that very false worldview?

Paul had been to Athens before coming to Corinth. Doing his best to reach that particular audience in Athens, he spoke on their academic level, offering a very well-reasoned and logical explanation of the gospel. Mostly, it fell flat. Upon coming to Corinth, he was rather low-key for a while. During that time, we can sense that he regained his composure after that bad experience in Athens, realizing that the gospel of Christ could not be made reasonable enough to win hearts that way. So, he writes here how he approached the Corinthians altogether differently than he had the Athenian crowd.

Setting aside the fine oratory, the sharp logical structure, and anything arising from human intellectual authority, Paul spoke simply the truth of Jesus on the Cross. This was not some grand performance and skill, but a man shaken by the vast glory with which he was entrusted. If the power of God Himself could not accomplish the mission, nothing any man could do would make any difference. Thus, many in the city came to Christ simply because Paul told the truth and told it simply.

Surely, there is wisdom from God among mature believers, but it is nothing like the wisdom of this world. The most brilliant of rulers can’t possibly grasp the wisdom of Heaven. This world and its rulers will be forgotten, but the mysteries of God are eternal. Had the high and mighty been aware of this wisdom, Christ would have been crowned, not crucified. Paul quotes Isaiah 64 where the prophet notes that if God were to make a demonstration that human minds must acknowledge, they still would not understand the things God shows His servants without all that noise. The truth comes through the Spirit, not the intellect. And it is the full and ultimate truth of all things, because the Spirit who dwells in us has seen it all. Do you understand that no one knows the intentions of man so well as the man himself? Just so, God the Spirit knows the mind of God the Father.

When the Lord awakens our spirits to receive His Spirit, we reject the things of this world. Whatever God has for us comes through His Spirit. This is what Paul had been teaching, not speaking with the best understanding of human intellect, but the way God speaks to us. He spoke in a way that required exercising the spirit to grasp spiritual truth. Men with dead spirits have no place for God’s Spirit, and no capacity for receiving the Truth. They dismiss the whole thing as senseless babble. We who have living spirits see things through God’s eyes, and we are above human understanding, living in ways mere intellect finds incomprehensible.

Again, Paul quotes the prophet, this time Isaiah 40 where God is described as measuring the universe with the span of His hands. Who is on a par with God? Who has standing to advise Him, let alone evaluate what He has done? By implication, the only answer would be His own Son. That Son has brought His mind into our spirits.

Lyn's son, Joe, just came by to pick up some vegetables I had cooked and frozen last month and he had some not so good news.  Lyn has fallen twice in the last week, cannot get around very well, has an infection of some kind, his bloodwork is not good and he WILL NOT go to the doctor.  I understand why he would not want to be in the hospital again for sure, but I am concerned.
 
We all need to pray for Joe.  He looked very overwhelmed.  I told him that I was here for him.  That if something happens to his dad (I didn't say "die", but he knew what I meant) that I am here for him and would help with whatever he needs.  I told him I know exactly what needs to be done and how and who and where.....   He looks so sad, and I, well, he needs our prayers - for strength, for patience, for guidance, for wisdom, for compassion - for all those things that a person needs when they are taking care of someone.
 
Joe is all Lyn has and vice versa.  Don't know what one would do without the other.  Especially with Lyn being in such bad health and with Joe having to go to work.  They cannot afford a caregiver and I doubt if Lyn would want a stranger in his house.
 
Anyway, we have SO MUCH to be grateful for.  Wish there was something more I could do for him/them.
 
Thank you family for being there when the light shines and in the dark hours as well.

Love you all!

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

The balance of Paul's Letter to the believers in Rome is personal in nature, not doctrinal, so we follow the canonical order into 1 Corinthians. We've already taken a look at the back story to his troubles with the church at Corinth. We have today only two of the four letters he wrote to them during a crisis of obedience to the Scripture. That church had a serious problem trying to shed the notoriously lax pagan morality for which the city was renowned.

After a rather brief introduction, Paul jumps right into a major embarrassment: The church members in Corinth had not left behind their worldly approach to human organization. The various English translations of this chapter themselves often seem to miss the point by catering to a very human form of organizational wisdom. What kind of unity is Paul demanding here?

Whatever it is, he does not refer to the kind of unity humans typically seek. It's not uniformity of thought, per se, because that is simply not possible without violating everyone's convictions. In an effort to bring human unity, some members of the church were promoting one model or another, trying to pressure the rest to follow their choice. It was partisan politics, as if they could vote for whom the Lord meant them to follow. Paul was deeply offended that anyone would push a partisan model using his name.

He quotes Isaiah 29:14 from a passage where Isaiah castigates the nation of Israel for pursuing worldly ways. The people kept saying the Lord's name, but they substituted man's ways for His Word. This is what the Corinthians were doing. It didn't matter what name they claimed as their model, none of them were actually following the models, who were all servants of Christ.

Jews demanded a miracle that benefited them materially, while Gentiles demanded something that tickled their human reasoning. Jesus on the Cross condemned fleshly desires; that grisly death was His greatest victory. It was neither profitable nor worldly wise, but it's how He saved people from this life.

Humans cannot comprehend the Cross with their own capabilities. Paul chides them for losing sight of grace. The majority of the church members had been losers in flesh when the Spirit of the Lord drew them. The only way you can come to the Cross is to nail your fleshly nature there. You must humble yourself as nothing by human reckoning, so that you have room to receive the Lord's wisdom and power.

Paul quotes from Jeremiah 9, where the prophet warns that nothing humans can generate on their own amounts to much in the eyes of God. Boast in Him.

Hi family. I need some prayer. Although it only happens once every so many years, my lower back is flared up again. The pain is constant. It is very difficult to get out of a chair or to bend over to do anything. Basically, I am totally incapacitated for now.

I will wait a day or so and if it doesn't go away, I will give myself an injection for the pain. It is an Anti-inflammatory non steroidal medication. It doesn't always work so that is why I wait. In the meantime I am using heat and cold and my homemade pain salve. It literally just started an hour ago and I did nothing that I know of to aggravate it.  I do have bulging disks between L4/L5 and L5/S1 for those who know what that means.  ?‍♀️

So if you would dear family, lift me up to the Lord for his kindness and mercy and perhaps healing.

Thank you!

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

That First Church Council back in Acts 15 should have buried the issue, but Jews kept trying to drag Gentiles back under their customs. And it was not just Moses, but several centuries of customary legalism.

No one should be surprised when Jews who come to Christ carry a lot of baggage, but so do Gentiles, just a very different kind of baggage. I noted previously: Paul first makes the subtle point that he agrees with the Gentile Christians regarding freedom from Laws through the higher principle of faith -- a direct and personal commitment to God. But that commitment should lead back into community. By grace we surrender some of that freedom back to the Father whence it came, so that we may keep the door open to those still bound by scruples from their old life under the Law.

When kosher was hard to get, Jews typically avoided eating meat. This was how Daniel and his friends handled the pagan Babylonian court diet. But for Gentiles, kosher was just a single cuisine among others that never challenged their faith either way. Paul isn't making law here for Christians. On the contrary, he appeals for peace between two very different backgrounds coming into one congregation.

There's no secret here that Jews were strong on law and weak on faith. It was the same regarding various holy days. For Gentiles, it was easier to just forsake their pagan practices and decide that every day was holy in one way or another. It was a very hard pill to swallow for Jews to be told their customs were contrary to faith. It was all too easy for two different brands of arrogance to create tensions that complicated the mission of the Body of Christ. It all hinged on the previous chapter about loving your own faith family.

Paul admits that he had philosophically stepped back from the Jewish ways; he was convinced it was baggage that slowed him down in pursuit of his Savior. Nonetheless, he pleaded with Gentiles to go easy on the encumbered Jews, to be sensitive about how far along they were in faith. Bear with them; go back and help them catch up.

So, moving on to Chapter 15, Paul calls for Jews and Gentiles together to go back and reexamine what the Old Testament Scriptures actually say. If you are truly zealous for God's reputation, you'll be forced to confront people and shake them out of their comfort zone. That was the point of Paul's quote from Psalm 69. It was the same passage quoted about Jesus when He cleansed the Temple. People who care more about power and wealth instead of God's will end up insulting His name, and it makes a mess that we all have to clean up, even when it's not our fault personally.

Jews and Gentiles inherited each other as family, the nation of Christ. Their sorrows are yours.

On the one hand, Jesus came strictly to the Jews. And Jews were notorious for their racist hatred of Gentiles. If there's one thing that caused Jews to reject their Messiah, it was His insistence on the very thing God's Word demanded: that the Jews reach out to Gentiles. That's what the Cleansing of the Temple was all about. And not by dragging them into Judaism, Jews were to offer Gentiles a particularly Gentile path to Jehovah (the Law of Noah). Much of the resentment Jews held was the old Talmudic insistence that Gentiles could never be equal to them but could be accepted only as slaves. And here in Rome were Gentile Christians actually serving as leaders in the church.

The Roman Christians had a long way to go.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

My son and I launched his model rocket three times last weekend. Video is here. Despite the heat and the sun making it difficult to see where it was sometimes, the lack of wind made it a good day for launching.

Speaking of the sun, I mention in the video that I thought I was damaging the phone camera by aiming it straight at the sun. I don't know much about phone cameras so that might not be an issue at all. However, I am surprised how well it maintained the picture while direct sunlight was hitting it.

In this letter, Paul keeps hammering on problems Jews have with faith in their Messiah. To be honest, the previous chapter was aimed more at Jews and their peculiar challenges than it was to Gentile believers. It's the same with this chapter.

First century Jews were notorious for objecting to pagan governments. They wouldn't hesitate to use the Pax Romana to make money (Jews in Rome tended to be wealthy), but suffered from a serious, almost maniacal obsession with demanding their "rights" as the Covenant Nation under Rome. They gained that unique privilege because a major faction in the Jewish government at the end of the Maccabean Period willingly invited Rome to get involved in an internal dispute. By the time Paul writes this letter, they deeply regretted it.

So, this passage is aimed at Jewish Christians there more than anyone else. By rejecting the Covenant of Moses, they brought a whole string of pagan imperial governments down on their own heads. They needed reminding of that. Thus, Paul warns them that their own God has arranged to keep them under Roman authority. They had better get used to it. At the same time, keep in mind that Paul didn't mean this as it sounds to our ears in English, given how he did not hesitate to manipulate the situation to avoid both Jewish and Roman government oppressing him. What Paul is warning against here is the standard Jewish truculence and senseless resistance out of spite.

You want government to leave you alone? Start working toward peace and efficiency in the world around you. Stop trying to circumvent every little thing. That is not righteousness. He reminds them what Jesus said more than once: Love your covenant family as family. That covers all the Law of Moses, and it works pretty well under Rome. What kind of behavior is really in their best interest? How do you keep from bringing the wrath of a pagan government down on your brothers and sisters? That would answer every question.

Paul's reference to knowing the time and waking up does not refer to the Return of Christ. Rather, anyone with half a brain could see that persecution was brewing in the Roman government. The only way to avoid a panic is to be ready for the worst. Make strong moral habits so that you are less likely to compromise when the pressure rises. Polish up your testimony; make sure you look like Christ. When the time comes, He will deliver you according to His divine will.