Category: 1 Corinthians

Take a moment to read 1 Corinthians 3:1-9 before reading the devotional below.

How spiritually mature are you? One way to figure out the answer is to look at the amount of Bible training you are receiving. Are you still just sticking with the basics, or are you trying to go deeper? Meeting Jesus is wonderful, but knowing him takes an eternity. We will never run out of depth to explore as we seek to know God.

Paul was challenging the Corinthian believers to go deeper. Because they were satisfied with a basic knowledge of the good news of Jesus, they stopped trying to learn. They were not applying God’s teaching to their lives. If your life looks pretty much the same now as it did when you first encountered Jesus, you have become stuck. You need to go deeper into what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Here’s your freedom for today:

Your life is about to get better.

God is interested in helping you grow. It’s not all on you, and you can’t make it happen by yourself. There are several pieces that come together to bring about change and growth in your life. First, you need to position yourself in some fertile soil. Going to church is great, but digging into the Bible or listening again to Sunday’s sermon is like good fertilizer for the garden of your soul. Having a mentor or a pastor investing in you is like the water for your garden. But soil and water are not enough for the seeds that have been planted. God is shining on your life and facilitating the growth that is necessary. (And just as a reminder, seeds have to die before they can sprout.) Are you tending to your garden today? What could you do to level up on your spiritual life this week?

Take a moment to read 1 Corinthians 3:10-23 before reading the devotional below.

Do you trust yourself? Your instinct might be to say, “No way!,” but think about it again. In what parts of your life do you genuinely seek help? Often we say we don’t trust ourselves, yet our actions show that we are indeed attempting self-reliance because we do not regularly and humbly ask for help (and then use that help well!).

In today’s passage, Paul is using the metaphor of a house. The foundation of your house matters, and if it isn’t Jesus then your house will collapse eventually. Your building materials also matter — just like the story, “The Three Little Pigs,” brick will outlast straw or sticks. If you are trying to build a house all by yourself, you’ll fail. In this metaphor, that means that if you are constructing your own beliefs and worldview, it won’t work for long.

Here’s your freedom for today:

You are part of a bigger picture.

You weren’t meant to construct your faith all by yourself. We start with the foundation of Jesus: who he is, what he taught, and the reality of the eternal freedom that is ours because of his death and resurrection. We then build on that faith together, and we are the construction materials. God is building something greater than anything we could construct in human wisdom: the Church. This is “Church” with a capital “C” because it is all the followers of Jesus around the world. The way that the Church comes together is something only God can truly see or understand. We catch glimpses of what he is doing, but we cannot see all the moving parts at once. God invites you to be a part of what he is doing. Ground yourself on Jesus and position yourself with other believers to stay connected to this reality.

Take a moment to read 1 Corinthians 4:1-7 before reading the devotional below.

When you are doing supernatural things, it’s hard to know how you are doing. That’s why in today’s passage, Paul says he doesn’t trust humans (including himself) to make that call. Even when our conscience is clear, we might not be supernaturally effective. Only God can judge our progress and our actions.

Why do we spend so much time judging each other? Some might even claim that Christians are supposed to judge other people (as some kind of moral police?). Nothing could be farther from the truth. Here Paul tells us that judging others is not our right. He says, “Don’t judge people ahead of time…” What “time” is he talking about? The end of the world. God’s Judgment Day. So if it’s before that (which it is), there’s no room for judgment.

Here’s your freedom for today:

God sees the real you.

That “freedom” word might sound a little scary. God sees the real me?? I hope not… The thing is, when God sees the real you, he loves you. Remember that house we talked about yesterday? We build our foundation on Christ. We serve other followers of Jesus together as one house or one body. Within that, God is the only one that has any right to judge you or evaluate your spiritual life. He knows your heart, and he loves you. Often we judge others because of our own insecurities. What would it mean for you to be confident enough in your own relationship with God that you don’t need to evaluate anyone else? When God sees the real you, it means that his relationship with you is secure. He’s not going anywhere. You can rest in that and press into shaky and supernatural places without regard for how anyone else is doing.

Take a moment to read 1 Corinthians 4:8-21 before reading the devotional below.

The Bible claims to be the inspired word of God, written for our instruction and learning. We have to keep that in mind as we read today’s passage because Paul seems quite upset. We might view his writing to the Corinthians as self-centered or having an ax to grind. Why would God inspire him to write these words? What are we to learn here?

We don’t know the entire situation, but so far Paul has made a lot of points about human leaders. In previous sections, he has made sure they know that it all comes back to Jesus, not Paul or Apollos or anyone else. Here he is pointing out that they see to be forgetting the significance of the work he had done with them. When we take for granted a gift God has given us, pride is often a result.

Here’s your freedom for today:

The Gospel isn’t about a “feel good” experience.

Paul lived a life of sacrifice. The apostles were ridiculed and persecuted, and many of them died as martyrs. (Some have claimed that Peter died by crucifixion, hung upside-down on a cross.) These Corinthian believers were becoming prideful, minimizing the gift God had given them in their beginnings with the apostle Paul. They were riding high on their spiritual lives, when they were not enduring even close to the sacrifice Paul and the other apostles were enduring. There was something empty about some of the leaders and preachers rising up among them. Paul knew more than anyone that the Gospel was not about a “feel good” experience. They were engaged in a spiritual war with real casualties and prisoners. Paul risked his life daily. Does your life sound more like the Corinthians or like Paul’s? How can you maintain a humility about your faith and avoid thinking you are better than you are?

Take a moment to read 1 Corinthians 5 before reading the devotional below.

Today’s passage is the entire chapter because the entire idea is important to consider all at once. Recall from yesterday’s devotional that the Corinthians have become spiritually prideful and think that they are growing more than they actually are. Here we see a specific example of something going wrong: a man in their congregation is sleeping with his stepmother. This could be translated as “his father’s wife,” but either way it is clear it is not his biological mother. Although this is not a case of direct incest, it is not how followers of Jesus behave.

This chapter is the only time in the Bible that we are told to judge. Paul acknowledges that the rest of Scripture tells us not to judge, and this remains true about unbelievers. We are specifically told over and over again not to judge anyone who does not claim to be a Christian. However, when a person claims to follow Jesus, there is a role in other believers using discernment and judgment to determine whether or not that person can remain in the church. He offers a list of offenses that are so unlike Jesus they are evidence that a person is not a genuine believer: sexual sin, greed, idol worship, abuse, alcoholism, and cheating. You cannot claim to know Jesus and do these things.

Here’s your freedom for today:

You can live a free life when you follow Jesus.

Being a Christian is not about church attendance or being a nice person. It is about living a free life. When sex, greed, idols, abusive behavior, substances, or cheating are defining your life, you are not free. We turn our will and our lives over to Jesus when we begin to follow him. We receive forgiveness and turn away from our old ways of living. One of the biggest problems in the American church is that we are selective in the attention we pay to sin. Certain types of sexual sin are considered “worse” than others. Abusive husbands and fathers are not being driven out of the church in droves (and instead, sometimes are the elders of the church…). We need to be careful to follow the whole of Scripture in how we address these issues, and we need to keep the freedom of the Gospel in mind. There are some claiming to be believers and heralded as “Christian leaders” who are greedy, cheaters, and hungry for political power. They abuse others to get ahead. And often they are the loudest voices shouting about those committing sexual sins (while they secretly have their own). These false teachers are harming the Gospel and need to be publicly challenged and removed by other Christians. Unfortunately, we tend to do the opposite of this passage: judge unbelievers and give those who claim to be Christians the benefit of the doubt. How can we get back to the heart of this passage?