'brothers' in 1 & 2 Corinthians

The term ‘brothers’ is used 36 times in 1 & 2 Corinthians. The ESV translates this directly from ‘adelphoi’. With the rise of gender-inclusive language over the past two decades there has been a greater need to clarify the translation of this word. While some translations have opted to be inclusive in the text (ie: ‘brothers and sisters’ as translated by the TNIV and NLT) it is best to keep the text pure and understand how this word should be understood.

Adelphoi often refers to the family bond between two males from the same mother. In the gospels, this is the usual sense (Matthew 4:18, John 7:3), but not the only (Matthew 25:40). In 1 Corinthians, only once does the word have this force (9:5 when Paul refers to the half-brothers of Jesus). So what does it mean 35 other times?

In his correspondence with the Corinthians, Paul uses the term ‘adelphoi’ to refer to the whole church. Several indicators have led to this conclusion. First, Paul is writing a letter with the understanding that it would be read aloud to the entire church. Second, it is obvious that Paul is not writing to a group of biological brothers (1:2). Third, Paul uses other terms to address them that do not have a male quality (ie: 3:16, 4:14, 7:8, 7:25).

The word that usually refers to male siblings is now being used to refer to a church. Why doesn’t Paul use the expression ‘brothers and sisters’? Probably the most natural reason is because it is the same word root. In the greek language words are either masculine, feminine or neuter. This usually has nothing to do with sexuality (ie: ‘night’ is feminine, yet is is a time of the day). However, in the case of ‘adelph’ the ending changes the gender. Adelphoi means brothers and Adelphai means sisters. It would seem redundant to use the masculine and feminine forms in the 35 uses of the word.

In our reading of the text of 1 & 2 Corinthians, we understand Paul to be addressing the whole congregation of believers when he uses the word ‘brothers’.

Those of you who don’t enjoy such technical work haven’t read this far. But the implications of this are huge. Was the letter written to just the men of the the church, or to the men and women? I am preaching and applying this to all of us because I believe this to be Paul’s intended audience. And we must be careful to gain this application from the text itself, not from broader to be gender inclusive.

Retirement Calling

"You may have heard that retirement can kill you. Men and women die of boredom, for lack of intellectual challenge, or from the deafening silence that can accompany a spouse’s death. Depressed saving accounts may represent another motivation to stay gainfully employed. Even if times were better, you might simply prefer staying active in your career, maintaining a position of influence that you’ve worked hard to reach."

You can read rest of this great article on retirement here: www.ligonier.org/tabletalk/2009/10/1198_Don't_Retire_We_Need_You"

It is an excellent challenge to a congregation like ours that is a pairing of young families and those ready to or already retired. The demographic of Kimberley matches our congregation and probably won't change as Kimberley continues to attract this demographic. Instead of battling against this trend, Chediak's article is a beautiful picture of how these two worlds can work really well together. There are many examples in our church of how this is working well, I hope this encourages more of it. And for you on the younger side of this pairing, the article is good challenge for you as well, so read on.

Baptism

On September 19th, hours before packing up the kids for the fall event at the Taggarts, I got in touch with Jesse (we were playing phone tag for a couple of days). He wanted to get baptized. I’ve known Jesse for almost a year now and we’ve talked about baptism and I knew that he understood it, and would be ready for it when he said he was. 20 hours notice to fill and warm the church tank isn’t much, so I gave Jesse a few options. We could wait a couple weeks (I was out of town the next Sunday), do it in cold water, or do it in a few hours in the hot tub at the fall event. We opted for the hot tub and it ended up being more significant than I had thought.

Baptism is practiced immediately after a profession of faith. I don’t ask people to go through classes, clean up their life, or hang around for a few years before baptism. So I loved it that we were doing it immediately after Jesse was reading his Bible and feeling prompted by God. I also loved that it was informal, real, before God’s people as they were gathered and without the unnecessary feeling that we should be in a church building. There was around 25 people there and everyone was really affirming of the way it was done.

Jesse’s story is that his life was in the wrong direction until a few years ago he was involved in a car crash that should have killed him. He had to be resuscitated three times, and suffered many serious injuries spending over a month in hospital to recuperate. Today he knows that God has intervened in his life and provided a very uncommon recovery. He has also been on a search to find out more about the God who saved his physical life. As a result he has heard the gospel and received God’s grace in his life. He knows that Jesus is his substitute and has given him a new heart.

The event, where he was baptized, ended up being only a few hundred feet away from the site of this accident that initiated his new life in Christ. It was a powerful testimony that God is working to redeem our lives for his glory. Next time you see Jesse, encourage him in his new life.

“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” Romans 6:4

Update of Collision Movie

Finally, the release date of October 27th has been set for the movie 'Collision'. It is a documentary that features a series of debates between atheist Christopher Hitchens and Christian Doug Wilson. I've been excited about this for quite a while now. You can visit the website 'www.collisionmovie.com' and watch the first 13 minutes of the film. I plan on organizing a showing somewhere in Kimberley. I you are interested, please show yourself.

Responses to 'Missional Church'

What I shared about on Sunday has been on my heart for some time, and I am amazed at how it has been on the hearts of others at the same time. If you haven’t heard it, please take the time to do so and get in on the conversation. Video of the Sermon is posted in the teaching section of the church website (www.kimberleyfellowship.com)

Before I could leave the front of the church someone greeted me to talk about the idea of our church being engaged in our community. Toward the end he made one of those ‘wouldn’t it be great if...’ statements that when I got it, it summed up what I’m thinking perfectly. ‘Wouldn’t it be great if one day the city had to come to us if they wanted something to happen’. What if the church was the critical player in addressing the needs of the city? I think that is a great vision. Going from irrelevant to relevant.

Others are not quite there, still unsure of the wisdom or viability of engaging the city, but others were already out the door doing the kind of ministry I’m talking about before the service was over. And I’m not kidding. You’ll be hearing more about a huge opportunity to engage in ministry outside of the church shortly. And it’s already happening by God’s wisdom.

I have heard great applications to our church budget. Does our budget need to shift? Yes. Our budget needs to change and so does the way we organize our ministry teams. We must remain committed to teaching our children and serving communion, but somewhere we must say no to things so we can make shifts toward recontextualizing the gospel.

It is unrealistic to wait for me to do everything that needs to be done to shift our church back on vision. And this is my fear. But how encouraging it has been to hear some of us begin to made the applications we need and lead in the areas they are called to do so. Let us continue to talk, dream, encourage, do, and live our God-given mission.

Don't Give up Everything

The prayer in often sincere ‘Lord, I give everything to you’. But I think it is a lame excuse to look pious for a moment just to start doing things again later that day. This begins a cycle of guilt, disconnects us from our mission and ultimately makes us at the centre, not Christ.

Are Christians ever commanded to ‘give up everything?’ The answer to this question would take more than I am willing to write at this moment, but the conclusion would be ‘not in the sense we often are thinking when we say that’. The disciples tell Jesus that they have left everything, the rich young ruler leaves sad because he doesn’t give up everything, and all things are to be subject to Christ in the next age. But does this mean that we are to give up EVERYTHING? I don’t think we mean ‘just sin’ when we say ‘everything’. I think we mean, literally everything.

I remember being at evening church gatherings where my worship of God was pure and honest. I left humbled, yet joyful over the power that God yields in my life. Yet before bed as I watched the eleven o’clock sports highlights I felt guilty for going back to the pagan things I repented of hours ago. I even felt guilty about going to bed, should I give that up too?

I don’t think so. If we follow the ultimate good of the idea of giving up everything for God I think we ultimately see ourselves in a perfect church, meditating, praying and drinking tea made with ingredients listed in the Old Testament. This isn’t what God wants. Please resist the desire to disagree with me here. God wants to redeem our lives. God wants to put us on a mission to proclaim the gospel. We should not think of giving up everything item by item until we are like him but rather redeeming everything so we are not empty, but full of godliness. We should keep our jobs, be connected to our culture, speak to our children, cut our lawns, make dinners, have sex with our spouse, clean our bathroom, vote in elections, and if there is time left over, watch the sports highlights.

The end result of giving everything up to God is a Christian elitism where some Christians are superior to others and these elitists form a church that is disconnected from both the world and any Christians who are not as good as they are. This is not the church. The church is both radically connected to culture and radically different than culture at the same time.

If instead of trying to give up everything (which is really impossible anyway) and started asking God what he wants us to do with everything, we’ll be in the direction to transform our lives.

The gospel...plus (part three)

Culture is unavoidable. The language we speak, our interests, jobs, food, humor, etc is all cultural. The idea that that the church needs to avoid cultural fads is simply an excuse to choose one cultural expression over another. It is impossible for the church to do things the same way for centuries and it obviously hasn’t happened.

There is one thing that should not change. It is the central teaching that we are bad, God is righteous and we can only be made righteous by God saving us through Jesus. This is the gospel, the only teaching the New Testament has.

The battle though, is often not fought for the gospel, but for how the gospel is applied in culture. We keep waiting for the ‘right’ cultural expression of the gospel and when we think we’ve found it, a little time goes by, our culture changes, and we are searching for it again. Some examples:

The Salvation army seemed to have it right when they sought to enroll people in ‘God’s army’ in the post-WWII culture. It was well respected until a new generation grew up in a country no longer at war. It was then criticized.

Dressing up for church, standing during services, removing hats at the church door seemed to be part of the Christian life for those who grew up respecting royalty. Since we took off our hats, dressed proper and stood at attention when the queen came to town, so much more should we do the same when we are in God’s house. Now that royalty looks less and less like God we don’t think this is so important anymore.

Reformers like Martin Luther wrote lyrics to songs sung in the pubs and the puritans brewed beer. Alcohol and Christianity went together like steak and red wine until prohibition 100 years ago. When drinking was associated with criminal activity drinking was heavily criticized. Only recently has this cultural trend swung back again and Christians once again drink beer and talk theology.

Since culture is not right and wrong, there will never be a perfect expression of the gospel. Rather we should seek to apply the unchanging truth about the work of God to love us in every culture. The application should constantly be changing, but the message not. Drinking or not drinking isn’t always right, but applying the gospel to the current culture.

I find this to be detrimental when churches create a culture that is so different from the surrounding city that they demand the people’s culture change so they can be forgiven by God. They ask them to listen to a specific style of music, do certain activities, speak a certain way, dress a certain way, vote for one particular political party, etc. I hope that our church looks like the cultures of Kimberley, but with the marked difference that the gospel makes.

I believe in the gospel, not the gospel plus common interests, not the gospel plus my position on a specific non-essential issue, and certainly not the gospel plus some cultural element.