Just Be Wronged!

  

Read 1 Corinthians 6

 

I like Paul’s turn of the phrase, speaking the truth in love. It’s got a ring to it.

It’s not waxing and waning and waxing worse in the King James vernacular, but it sounds like good modern-day Bible talk.

Speaking the truth in love.

Many of you who read their Bibles know that these words are from Paul’s letter to the churches in Ephesus. They speak of Christian maturity.  We should be able to communicate better with each other than those who do not know God.

Why is this coming up again? 

We just finished a chapter about a believer who didn’t believe but was in the midst of the congregation defying God and even mocking him.  That dog don’t hunt!  But it was hunting in Corinth, and Paul was down to the last option.

Turn him over to Satan so that his sinful nature, which actively wars against God, might be destroyed and his soul saved on the Day of the Lord.

Somebody along the way should have spoken to this guy in a spirit of love and tried to bring him to the Lord in words and deeds. The congregation ignored the problem or even embraced their freedom by practicing terrible things.

That dog don’t hunt! Apparently, there had been no previous effort to talk with this man and see what was going on with him that caused him to desire his old self more than the new creation he was intended to be.

Remember, this was Greece at the beginning of the Church Age. The Greeks were well known for their language, which covered the known world and their thinking.  Those great orators began a long-standing tradition of logic, thinking, perception, and decision-making only a few hundred years earlier.

The Greeks liked to cuss and discuss. Their nature as Greeks was to talk it out. But nobody talked to this guy who was getting booted out of the fellowship.

We should never get there. We need to talk things out.

Paul gives us general counsel for conflicts between or among believers. He said the last resort is to take another believer to a secular court. He said to get it worked out.

Just who is he to say this?

Jesus said it first. His directions might also include disputes with those who don’t follow Jesus, but Paul was focused on the church that belonged to, served, and worshiped Jesus.

Work it out.

I still think fondly of my time as a counselor in prison. After a few months, I smiled every time an inmate client approached the door to my office, paused, and walked away.

Later on, some would tell me that when they turned away it was because they knew before we talked about whatever the burning issue was, I would ask them:

·       How does this get your closer to getting out of here?

·       How does this help you stay out of facilities like this one?

·       What is the most profitable course of action available to you?

Understand that inmates live in very limited geography and have few possessions, and if for some reason they lost their recreation time or had their Ramen confiscated. That could be big time trauma for these supposedly hardened criminals.

It didn’t take much for an inmate to have a crisis. Surely, these wrongs came at the hands of the prison administration, an evil streak in a correctional officer, or perhaps the moon phase.

When you are locked up because you got caught and convicted for doing something wrong, your human nature rears its head looking for any and everything done to you that might have wronged you in some way.

You put out your own personal BOLO: Be on the lookout for anything that wrongs me. I hope you never get to understand that firsthand.

But after a few months, many would walk to my door, pause, and walk away knowing the coming questions. Why do I tell you this?

It took a lot of conversation to get to this point.

It took a lot of talking and listening to get to this point!

To reach this point, it took a conceptual and practical understanding of efficacy, which most of the senior staff didn’t grasp.

It took some work to get to this point.

In my mind, it was worth it. Having inmates ask themselves if what they think they want can get them any closer to their goals.

That took much conversation. It took work. It’s not stacking heavy bales of hay work or carrying a hundred-pound pack and twenty pounds of mortar rounds up the hill work, but it still requires focus, engagement of some sort of effort, and comes with the hope of producing something profitable.

Work!

But sometimes, the offense seemed so egregious that my standing questions didn’t help. What to do? What can you do?

Just be wronged.

Just accept the transgression against you without a hearing, without a chance to present your case, and without what would surely be the most just outcome, at least as you see it.

That was tough for an inmate to swallow. Your justice might be no justice at all, at least in the moment, but you are not taking the wrong exit on the interstate of getting to and keeping freedom.

As I said, that was tough for an inmate to swallow.

That’s tough for us to swallow!

But that is precisely Paul’s counsel. If you can’t work it out with another believer, you are better off just being wronged. You are better off not seeking redress if it must come from outside of the church.

If you have to go to a state or federal court to get justice with another believer, you are better off just to be wronged.

But should it come to this? No.

Believers should be the best communicators on the planet. We should speak in a spirit of love and listen in the same way.

The world doesn’t want you to be good at communication. Satan rejoices when we don’t communicate. We don’t grow much at all without communication. But what have we been taught in our life experiences?

There is the Seagull Model where you swoop in, say what you have to say, and that’s the end. ‘Nuff said.

Why call it the Seagull Model? You swoop in, poop on as many people as you can, and fly away. This is actually a leadership model (not a good one) that had application here.

That’s a wimpy, cowardly approach to communication. We must speak the truth in a spirit of love and receive what other believers are telling us in a spirit of love.

Of course, there is gossip. You never talk to the person or people directly, but you talk about them profusely.

 Remember, we are talking about believers.

Then there is the dialogue of the deaf. These are Stephen Covey's words, but they are on target. Both people, or perhaps many people, are talking at the same time. Nobody is listening.

There are surely others, but these cover upwards of eighty percent of the failed attempts to communicate that we see repeatedly.

But for the believer, none should have standing in their lives.

What is Paul saying?  Work it out.

But, but, but….

Work it out.

You’re mean.

Work it out.

WE CAN’T!

OK, then just be wronged.

Just be wronged!

Communication is a matter of will. I can’t force you to understand me, but I can force myself to keep listening to you until I do. That doesn’t mean tht we will agree, but we will understand each other.

I can do that. Paul’s counsel applies to all believers. We should never have to drag another believer to court.

But it happens. Our selfish human nature does not want to be wrong. We get that, right?  Christians in large numbers take others who are Christians to court all the time.

But our counsel is to work it out.  Work it out!

Let’s say, I take you to court and get what I want, but in the process, we become stumbling blocks for other believers and for non-believers looking for a reason to believe.

Consider the segue statement as Paul is about to change topics.

In our liberation from sin and death, we can do whatever we desire, but not everything is profitable.

Not everything is profitable!

As far as heaven and hell go, the pressure is off for the believer. We know that God has claimed us—yes, with all of our shortcomings—and won’t let us go. He loves us with an everlasting love.

We, as Christians, should be able to communicate with each other better than anyone else on the planet. The pressure is off. We are not headed to a lake of fire. Jesus has a room ready for us.

But when we hit gridlock or are ready to give up on communicating and take this guy or gal to court, don’t. Just be wronged.

This is more profitable in the Kingdom of God than being proven right in a carnal court. Being wronged is not the best possible outcome, but it is more profitable than believers taking each other to court.

But understand this. The best outcomes reside in good communication, with listening to understand being our best tool

Understand that this takes work.

Understand that it takes more work than you think it does.

Understand actual profitability resides in our will as believers to seek accord in Christ.

Understand that being wronged is better than dragging each other’s business into the street or court.

Why spend so much time on this?

Because this is tougher now. We live in the Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, or X world. Things that families would never share before are posted online for a few billion people to see.

Disputes seek an audience online. Parties to the dispute are looking for likes and shares, not real solutions.

This seeking to understand business is a foreign language to our world.

We, as believers, have something of a communication hierarchy that we can derive from the full biblical witness. Here goes:

1.    Work it out.

2.    Try again to work it out.

3.    Ask other believers to help work it out.

4.    Work it out.

5.    Don’t drag each other to court. Work it out.

6.    When you can’t work it out, just be wronged.

The freedom that we enjoy in Christ Jesus is incredible. We don’t fear eternal punishment. We are free to make all sorts of choices as we live out our salvation, but not all options are profitable.

Sometimes, you take it on the chin and press on towards the goal. We don’t typically put that in the church brochure, but if we want to grow in God’s grace, we might not get every transgression against us resolved on our schedule.

But trust God over your own understanding. If divine justice is required, I will trust the only qualified Judge to administer it.

We still use our sound minds, but we should not surrender them to the world because we want justice for us now. Sometimes, be wronged. Move on. Bring glory to God.

As I said, we don’t put that one in the brochure, but we must understand it in our hearts.

Amen.

 

 

This is how you do church

 Read 1 Corinthians 1

Acts 18

 

And so we come to Corinth, at least we accompany Paul as he was there in Acts 18. The Jews rejected him and he went to the Gentiles and started a church before returning to Asia Minor.

The Jews took Paul before the secular Greek authority because he was disrupting the Sabbath services with this Jesus business. Gallio did what Pilate couldn’t manage. He stuck by his decision not to get sucked into this obviously religious struggle.

The Jews didn’t get what they wanted from the local authorities, so they beat Sosthenes, the leader of the Corinth Synagogue. We find the name Sosthenes in Paul’s salutation and must wonder: Did the leader of the synagogue come to be a believer, or is this Sosthenes someone we won’t hear of again?

Paul also maintained a relationship with this church. We know because he addressed specific issues. This wasn’t just Sophomore Theology conducted by correspondence. This was Paul in the middle of the congregation’s business. Plenty of theological pointers exist, but this is mission work, not commentary from the sidelines.

This is how you do church!

Thankfully, we can just sit back and comment on those knucklehead Corinthians instead of getting another series of challenges from Tom. Or can we?

We don’t seem to have any problems with the Lord’s Supper, but we learned not to take it during a fellowship meal.

We don’t seem to have a problem coveting Spiritual Gifts. We seem to comprehend being a member of the body of Christ. Maybe we should read Romans instead. It has plenty of theology that we can apply in this modern century.

That’s one perspective. Try another. There is who we were before professing Jesus as Lord and there is who we are now. There is a word for that journey between these two points: who we were before Christ and who we are now. It's one of those four-letter words, but you don’t need to cover your children’s ears. The world is life.

Life

Life involves struggle and challenge. It sometimes runs us through the wringer. Life is sometimes just so apparently amazing, yet we struggle to find the blessing in our situation.

We live and give thanks for life itself.

We struggle. Everything seems hard. But we press on.

We hurt to our souls, and sometimes it just hurts right here, but it has your full attention. We know pain.

And we know joy. That inexplicable feeling overwhelms you with peace, hope, love, and other godly companions.

We know life and can empathize with those believers in Corinth from 2000 years ago. They were figuring out how to be the church.

They were figuring out how to be a church. They were not a synagogue that now embraced Christ. These were mostly pagans from a pagan culture who chose to profess Jesus is Lord!

They sound like us. We didn’t grow up Jewish. We don’t fully comprehend grafted in. But we are trying to please God in this modern and post-modern age.

From where we were before we knew Jesus to where we are now is life, but for us, it is life lived in grace. Let’s get to the letter.

Paul began his letter with his standard salutation—blessing and thanksgiving. He then moved directly into attacking a leadership crisis at its root. Some had divided into camps. I follow Apollos, Paul, Peter, and…

Paul noted that only Christ was crucified for you. There need be no divisions. There must not be division! Christ is the head of the church. And this is not news. You know this!

But some do not. The message of the cross means nothing to them. They are perishing. They are already dead in their sin but reject the lifeline as foolishness.

Jews demand signs and miracles. Greeks demand wisdom. Paul said that he came with the truth, not eloquence. He brought wisdom that the world would call foolishness in introducing a God they did not know and how much that one true God loved them.

We preach Christ crucified. It is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles—in this case, the Greeks. God chose the simple things of this world to put the so-called wisdom of the world to shame.

The cross—that despicable symbol of Roman power and oppression—will bring liberty to the one who will receive its message.

In very short order, Paul got down to business. It’s all rooted in God’s love that we know in the blood of Jesus. That blood was poured out on the cross. It’s that simple.

It seems crazy to a world—a world that is perishing—but it’s nonsense to them, nonetheless. It just can’t be that simple… There’s got to be a catch…

And what are we to learn from such counsel?  How about salvation in Christ? Jesus will always be looked upon as foolishness by those who are vested heavily in the things of this world. It does not make sense to those seeking only self-gratification.

The world will try to convince you that you are going the wrong way because so many others are headed in a different direction. But you are to stay the course. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus. Press on towards the goal.

Paul’s letters to the church in Corinth are often noted as good teachings because of the problems of this early church. But we should note that this church also had some things going for it.

Paul notes that the believers had received spiritual gifts, which were known to the community. Later, we will see Paul setting aside the argument over which gift is greater in these words: Yet I show you the most excellent way.

This church had a lot going for it, which makes it an even more valuable resource for us. Which of our bodies of believers is without fault?  Without Gifts?

Corinth had faults, and they had gifts. They had blessings, and they had blunders. They had faithful servants, and they had hard cases. The church had growth.

We have faults and gifts. We struggle and we obtain victories. We try to keep our eyes on Jesus and put his words into practice, but things get in our way repeatedly. We want to be overcomers but sometimes we find every stumbling block that there is. Sometimes, we become one.

We need counsel. Although we may have different problems and opportunities than the believers in Corinth, we have the same mission: to love one another and make disciples.

Having preached those two words for about a dozen messages in the last half of last year, I was pleased to hear them at one of those mega-churches with video satellites.  Make disciples.

Make Disciples!

We are to make disciples once we are perfect in everything we do, right? Not!

We make disciples while we work on our own discipleship. We call others to trade the wisdom of the world—which is foolishness—for the wisdom of God, and we do it while we are a work in progress.

And we do it while the world calls us fools.

Consider who you were before receiving Jesus as Lord. Now consider the new creation that you are. It’s a struggle sometimes to live up to being this new creature, but that struggle is growth, sanctification, and God continuing the good work that he began in us.

So, keep pressing on in your journey to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. And keep inviting others—others who are perishing—to know this liberty and peace that comes only through Christ.

Grow in God’s grace and make disciples. The world considers us foolish. We are assured of salvation.

To borrow words from Casting Crowns, Know him and make him known. Even when the world considers you to be a fool.

Draw nearer to God and invite others to join us on the journey.

Amen.

To the Sanctified

Read 1 Corinthians 1

Acts 18

We are sticking close to the start of this letter in this service.  We won’t venture far from the salutation.

To whom is Paul writing?

It’s to believers whom he might call the church of God or the Saints. Those are some fine titles. Paul also calls his target audience the sanctified—those who had been sanctified.

Sometimes, we get caught up in our church words. Sanctified is a good title. It’s not sanctimonious—holier than thou.

Sanctified is simply growing in grace. We are to develop, struggle, learn, and grow, knowing that God will never abandon us.

The church is composed of those whom God has called out of the world, set apart for his holy purposes, and sent back into the world with a mission. Yes, you are on a mission from God.

For now, let’s focus on the sanctified part. For the believer, everything that we experience is grist for the mill. God will use it in some way for the good.

So, I can see working on patience while I’m stuck in traffic, but illness, injury, and death are a little harder to make the connection.

We are sanctified. That doesn’t mean we have reached our destination. It means our destination is assured, and we are free to be who God made us to be and live this life to the full.

We are sanctified, not indemnified from trouble. We will still have trouble in the world but we are not confined to the sentences imposed by the world. We are growing in God’s grace.

We are growing. We are not who we were before we knew Christ. We are already complete—perfect—in Christ, but we are just not there yet.

Today, I ask—I challenge you—to grow in God’s grace. Live this life fully in a spirit of love. Learn from our Master and put his words into practice.

Take this sanctification business seriously. Jesus is ready for us to truly follow him. That means take his yoke and learn from him. That means put his words into practice. That means to be known as a disciple of Jesus by our love.

What do you get in return?

Typically, you will receive peace and hope. You will know joy and fellowship with other believers. You will live in the blessed assurance that you belong to the Lord.

And one more. You will know growth, growth in God’s grace.

You will know what it’s like to be sanctified.

And when we say sanctified, we mean a work in progress assured of completion.

When we say sanctified, we mean on your journey to holiness, knowing that God will get you to your destination.

When we say sanctified, we mean set apart for God’s purpose and sent back into the world to fulfill that purpose.

What’s the best thing we can do to be sanctified? Take his yoke, learn from him, and put his words into practice.

Amen.