Jeff Ragan’s Reviews > The First Epistle to the Corinthians > Status Update

"...what is involved here are two opposing views as to what it means to be people of the Spirit. For the Corinthians it meant 'speaking in tongues' & having wisdom & knowledge...without a commensurate concern for truly Christian behavior. For Paul it meant...to be full of the ...Holy Spirit...to behave as those 'sanctified in Christ Jesus & called to be his holy people' (1:2)...to 'walk in love'" (698).

"Tongues are fine, he will go on to affirm, provided they are interpreted. But not everyone should speak in tongues when the church assembles for worship. That makes everyone the same, which is like a body with only one part" (689).

"'If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?' This interchange of the sense organs makes it clear that Paul's point is not the 'inferiority' of one to the other. The point is the need for all members; otherwise some function of the body would be missing" (676).

"Paul saw the Spirit as the key to everything in the Christian life. It seems mandatory that such prevail again if there is to be effective Christianity in our day. But let the one who says that not force their own brand of 'spiritual unity' on the church as simply another human machination. Our desperate need is surely for a sovereign work of the Spirit to do among us what all our "programmed unity cannot" (673).

"Indeed, the truly remarkable feature of this catalogue is the attribution to 'each one' of a whole gamut of supernatural activities in the same matter-of-fact way that contemporary church leaders would list positions on an organizational chart!" (655-6).

"All of this suggests not only that we do not have here a systematic presentation of 'Spirit gifting,' but also that there is some doubt as to whether the apostle himself had precise and identifiably different manifestations ('gifts') in mind when he wrote these words" (650).

"The presence of the Spirit in power and gifts makes it easy for God's people to think of the power and gifts as the real evidence of the Spirit's presence. Not so for Paul. The ultimate criterion of the Spirit's activity is the exaltation of Jesus as Lord, which in turn expresses itself in loving concern for others. Whatever takes away from that...begins to move away from Christ..." (645).

"But Paul had a different view of life in the Spirit. For him it did not so much remove one from present existence as enable one to live in the present simultaneously in weakness and power...Life in the present is to be conditioned by the life of the future that has already begun with Christ's death and resurrection...but that life has only begun, it is not yet consummated" (635-6).

"The very table that is God's reminder...of grace...where we affirm again who and whose we are, has been allowed to become a table of condemnation for the very people who most truly need the assurance of acceptance that this table affords...One does not have to 'get rid of the sin in one's life' in order to partake. Here by faith one may once again receive he assurance that 'Christ receiveth sinners'" (627).

"The Lord's Supper is not simply a memorial of the Last Supper...It is a constant, repeated reminder - & experience - of the efficacy of that death for us...Salvation through Christ's death has created a new community of people who bear his name. We ourselves rather miss the point of Paul's presentation if we think of the table only in terms of our own personal needs & not also in terms of the needs of others" (617).