Let’s stop usurping His rolesIn five words Paul enunciates the basic principle of the Christian life: “You are not your own” (1 Cor. 6:19). Some of the Corinthian Christians were
acting like they were autonomous, as if their lives had not been bought and
paid for with the precious blood of Christ. Because they ignored this
You are not your own boss. Because we are Christ’s, we are highly motivated as workers-—it is the Lord Christ that we serve (Col. 3:24). This means doing all that is expected of us, and more. We will be honest and trustworthy because we love and respect Him who is our ultimate boss. You are not your own banker. Both our ability to make money (Deut. 8:18) and our possessions themselves are gifts from God, so that we can be generous on every occasion (2 Cor. 9:11). Since our money belongs to Another, we learn to be content with it or without it, by Christ’s strength (Phil. 4:11-13). You are not your own lawyer. The old proverb, “He who represents himself has a fool for a client,” could never be truer than in heaven’s court. If we stand alone in that docket, we will surely be condemned (Rom. 3:23; 6:23). But thank God, we have an Advocate with the Father, who is effective, for He pleads the merits of His own life and His death (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 John 2:1–2). Wise clients will follow the advice of their lawyer. Boss, banker, lawyer—-in all of these roles and more, Christ is outstandingly successful, and you and I are miserable failures. Let’s listen to Paul and stop trying to usurp these jobs. To do so is to insult the Lord who can do them so much better. |
| —Steve Singleton DeeperStudy.com |
Want to go deeper?To continue the list a little more, when Paul says, "Christ has become for us wisdom from God" (1 Cor. 1:30), he uses the Greek noun sophia ("wisdom, insight, intelligence, knowledge"). This has a big background in the Old Testament, especially Proverbs 8, in which wisdom is personified and described autobiographically as God's co-worker in bringing all things into the existence. Anyone who would seek after wisdom should not leave Christ behind in its pursuit: in him "are found all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Col. 2:3). That explains in part why Paul sees Christ as the meaning behind the rock from which the Israelites get water in the wilderness (1 Cor. 10:4), for rabbinic tradition associated the rock allegorically with God's wisdom. As you read through the gospel accounts, you witness again and again the wisdom with which Jesus spoke, even as early as 12 years old (Luke 2:47, 52), during his Nazareth sermon (Luke 4:22), during his open forum at the Temple (Matt. 22:22, 33-34, 46). Jesus Himself recognized that he was greater than Solomon, acknowledged as the wisest man in the world (Matt. 12:42; Luke 11:31). Yet, in our arrogance, we presume to know better than the Wisdom of God, thinking we can direct our own steps. How foolish! If instead, we submit to Him, not only can He supply the wisdom we lack, but can become for us "our righteousness, our holiness, and our redemption" (1 Cor. 1:30). None of those things we can do for ourselves. He died on the cross to qualify Himself to take our place and to exchange His attributes for ours (see 2 Cor. 5:21; 8:9). Why would we refuse such a trade? How foolish!
Ben Witherington, III. The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth (1997). In recent years Jesus' time, place and social setting have received renewed scholarly attention. New research on the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Jewish and Hellenistic texts has resulted in a surge of new images of Jesus and new ideas about his ministry. Dubbed the Third Quest for the historical Jesus, this recent effort is a transformation of the first quest, memorialized and chronicled by Albert Schweitzer, and the second quest, carried out in the 1950s and 1960s in the wake of extreme Bultmannian skepticism. The controversial works of John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg and Burton Mack, and the results of the Jesus Seminar have been thrust upon the public by publicists and media as the voices of learned consensus. Meanwhile, at the center of the scholarly investigation of Jesus, a less celebrated but certainly no less informed majority rejects many of the methods and conclusions of those who have captured the limelight. In this book Dr. Ben Witherington, a participant in the Quest, offers the first comprehensive determination and assessment of what scholars are really saying about Jesus. In addition to the views of Crossan, Borg and Mack, he presents and interacts with the work of important scholars such as Geza Vermes, E. P. Sanders, Gerd Theissen, Richard Horsley, John P. Meier, N. T. Wright and Elisabeth Schssler Fiorenza, as well as outlining his own understanding of Jesus as sage. Here is an indispensable survey and assessment of the most significant religious scholarly debate of the 1990s. Now with a lengthy new postscript, the new paperback edition of this widely praised book updates you on the continuing saga of the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus.
The New Testament presents Jesus Christ as wisdom from God, which sends us to explore the wisdom passages in the Hebrew Scriptures, specifically Proverbs 8, the focal point of the 4th-century Arian controversy regarding the pre-existence of Christ, culminating in the Council of Nicea and the Nicene Creed. Is Christ a created being, or does He share eternality with God the Father? Singleton defends orthodox Christology while at the same time offering a new solution to understanding Proverbs 8 in its original context. Recommended for online reading: Charles H. Spurgeon. "Christ--The Power and Wisdom of God" (1857). |
principle, they were practicing sexual immorality. Paul tells them that instead they ought to “glorify God with your body” (v. 20). But this principle has broader applications than just sexual purity.
