One Body, and the Greatest of These

The next question on their list had their meetings in an uproar. God had given people in that church things nobody could do by himself. One would suddenly know the wise thing to say. One would speak in a language he had never learned. One would pray for a sick man and the man would get up. Instead of being glad, they had begun ranking each other. “There are different gifts, and the same Spirit. There are different jobs, and the same Lord. There are different workings, and the same God, who works everything in everybody. To one is given a word of wisdom; to another a word of knowledge; to another trusting; to another gifts of healing; to another the working of powers; to another prophecy; to another the telling apart of spirits; to another kinds of tongues; to another the meaning of the tongues. One and the same Spirit works every one of them, handing them out just as he wants.”

Then he gave them a picture. “The body is one thing, and it has many parts, and all the parts are one body. That is how it is with Christ. We were all immersed into one body in one Spirit — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free. Suppose the foot said, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body.” “Would that make it not part of the body? And if the ear said, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” “would that make it not part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? But as it is, God set the parts in the body, every one of them, just where he wanted them. And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” “and the head cannot say that to the feet either. Just the other way round: the parts that look weaker are the ones you cannot do without, and the parts we think less of we put more care into. God mixed the body together and gave the most honor to the part that was short of it, so that there would be no split down the middle of it. If one part hurts, all the parts hurt with it. “You are Christ’s body, and every one of you is a part of it. God set some in the gathering: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then acts of power, then healings, then people who help, people who steer, kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Do all speak in tongues? Be eager for the greater gifts. And I will show you a way beyond all measure.”

This is what he wrote next, to a church that was suing itself. “If I speak with the tongues of men, and of messengers, and do not have love, I have turned into banging bronze or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophecy, and know every secret and all knowledge, and have all the trust there is, enough to pick up a mountain and move it, and do not have love, I am nothing. If I hand out everything I own a piece at a time, and hand over my own body to be burned, and do not have love, I gain nothing. “Love waits without complaining. Love is kind. Love is not jealous. It does not show off. It does not swell up. It does not behave shamefully. It does not go looking after its own. It is not stung into anger. It keeps no list of the wrongs done to it. It takes no pleasure when things go wrong for other people, but it is glad along with the truth. It carries everything, trusts everything, hopes everything, holds up under everything. “Love never falls down. Prophecies — they will be finished with. Tongues — they will stop. Knowledge — it will be finished with. Because we know a piece of it, and we prophesy a piece of it, and when the whole thing comes, the piece is finished with. “When I was a baby I talked like a baby, I thought like a baby, I reasoned like a baby. When I became a man I was done with the things of the baby. Now we are looking in a bronze mirror at a riddle. Then it will be face to face. Now I know a piece of it. Then I will know the whole of it, the way I have been known all along. “So three things are left standing: trust, hope, love. And the greatest of the three is love.”

Then he came back down to the meetings and the noise. “Chase after love. And be eager for the spiritual things — most of all that you may prophesy. A man speaking in a tongue is not speaking to people but to God, because nobody understands him. The man who prophesies is speaking to people, building them up, putting heart into them, comforting them. A man speaking in a tongue builds up himself; a man prophesying builds up the whole gathering. “Think of a flute, or a harp. If the notes are all the same, how will anybody know the tune? If the trumpet gives a muddy call, who is going to get ready for the battle? It is the same with you: if what comes out of your mouth is not a word anybody can recognize, you will be talking into the air. So let the man who speaks in a tongue pray that he may be able to give the meaning. I will pray with the spirit, and pray with the mind too; I will make music with the spirit, and make music with the mind too. Otherwise, how is the plain man sitting there to say the Amen to your thanksgiving, when he has no idea what you said? “I would rather say five words in a meeting with my mind, to teach somebody else, than ten thousand words in a tongue. Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be babies where evil is concerned, but grown men in your thinking. If everybody speaks in tongues and plain people come in, will they not say you are mad? But if everybody is prophesying, and somebody who does not believe comes in, the hidden things of his heart are brought into the open, and he falls on his face and bows down to God and says, “God is really among you.”

Then the rule for the room, plainly, because they had all been talking at once. “What is it to be, then, brothers? When you come together, each one of you has something — a psalm, a teaching, something uncovered for him, a tongue, the meaning of a tongue. Let every bit of it be for building up. “If anybody speaks in a tongue, let there be two, or at the very most three, and one at a time, and let somebody give the meaning. If there is nobody there to give the meaning, let him keep quiet in the meeting and speak to himself and to God. “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. If something is uncovered for another man sitting there, let the first one stop talking. You can all prophesy, one at a time, so that everybody learns and everybody is encouraged. The spirits of prophets do what the prophets tell them. God is not a God of uproar but of peace. “Let the women be silent in the gatherings; it is not permitted for them to speak, but let them be under order, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; it is a shameful thing for a woman to speak in a gathering. “Or did the word of God start out from you? If anybody thinks he is a prophet, let him recognize that what I am writing to you is the Lord’s. So then, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not stop anybody speaking in tongues; only let everything be done properly and in order.”

Then the last thing, and it was the biggest. Somebody at Corinth had been saying there was no such thing as the dead getting up again. “Hold on to the good news I brought you. I handed on to you, among the first things, what I was given myself: that Christ died for our sins, as the writings said; and that he was buried; and that he has been raised on the third day, as the writings said; and that he was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve, then by more than five hundred brothers at once, most of them alive to this day. Then by James, then by all the apostles. And last of all by me — the least of the apostles, because I hunted God’s gathering. But by God’s favor I am what I am.

“Now if Christ is announced as raised from the dead, how do some of you say there is no rising of the dead? If there is no rising of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either — and then what we are announcing is empty, and your trusting is empty, and the ones who fell asleep in Christ are lost. If our hoping in Christ is only good for this life, we are the most pitiable people on earth. “But Christ has been raised from the dead — the first sheaf of the harvest of everybody who has fallen asleep. Death came through a man; the rising of the dead comes through a man too. In Adam everybody dies; in Christ everybody will be made alive, each in his own turn: Christ the first sheaf, then the ones who are Christ’s when he comes. Then the end, when he hands the kingdom over to God the Father. And the last enemy done away with is death.” “Do not be fooled: bad company ruins good habits. Sober up, as you ought, and stop sinning; for some have no knowledge of God. I say it to your shame.”

Then somebody’s real question, the one a person asks at a graveside. “How are the dead raised? What sort of body do they come in?” “Foolish man. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies, and what you sow is not the body that is going to be. You sow a bare grain of wheat, and God gives it a body, just as he decided, and to every seed a body of its own. Not all flesh is the same flesh: people have one kind, animals another, birds another, fish another. The sun has one shine and the moon another and the stars another. “That is how it is with the rising of the dead. It is sown rotting; it is raised beyond rotting. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in shining. It is sown weak; it is raised strong. It is sown a body with a soul in it; it is raised a body with the Spirit in it. The first man is out of the earth, made of dust; the second man is out of heaven.

Then a secret. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom, and what rots cannot inherit what does not rot. Look — I tell you a secret. We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. It will sound, and the dead will be raised past all rotting, and we will be changed. Then the word that was written will come true: death has been swallowed up into victory. “Where, Death, is your victory? Where, Death, is your sting? “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. So, my dear brothers, stand where you are and do not be moved. Keep on with the Lord’s work, always, knowing that in the Lord none of your work is wasted.”

After that the letter came down to ordinary things. “Now about the collection for the holy ones. Do the same as I told the gatherings of Galatia to do. On the first day of every week, let each one of you put something aside at home, saving up whatever he has been able to spare, so that there is no collecting to be done when I get there. And when I come, whoever you decide on, I will send with letters to carry your kindness to Jerusalem; and if it is worth my going too, they can go with me. “I will come by way of Macedonia, and perhaps winter with you. But I am staying at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great wide door has opened for me here — and there are plenty of people against me. If Timothy comes, see that he has nothing to be afraid of among you; let nobody treat him as nothing, but send him on his way in peace. And I begged our brother Apollos hard to come to you; he will come when he gets the chance.”

The last lines were short, the way he always ended. “Stay awake. Stand in the faith. Be brave. Be strong. Let everything you do be done in love. “You know the household of Stephanas — they were the first fruit in all Achaia, and they signed themselves up for the service of the holy ones. Put yourselves under people like that, and under everybody who works with them. Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus rested my spirit and yours; give people like that their due. “The gatherings of Asia greet you. Aquila and Prisca greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the gathering that meets in their house. All the brothers greet you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. “The greeting is in my own hand — Paul’s. If anybody does not love the Lord, let him be a thing set apart for cursing. Marana tha — our Lord, come. The favor of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with all of you in Christ Jesus.”

The letter was rolled up and carried down to the ship. There was another letter coming to Corinth after it, and a harder one, and it would cost him more than this one did.