... and again I want to summarize I'm going to try to do this very quickly but I want us to see the pattern that's developing here where in the book of 1 Corinthians in chapter 1 we saw that the Corinthian church has been visited with a powerful anointing of God's spirit and it's replete with his gifts in spite of which fact it is absolutely torn apart with division party strife, sectarianism and especially and we see this more and more clearly as we begin to move through the book spiritual pride spiritual pride amongst those who have been so blessed they're proud of their blessings as if they earned it we define that as a carnal attitude like unto the attitude of the surrounding culture chapter 2 we saw that God's purpose both generally his broad purpose throughout the church, and specifically in the giving of his gifts, is to confound worldly wisdom with his own divine foolishness. And those who are spiritually sensitive will see this, will understand it. He says the things of the Spirit are understood only as the Spirit interprets them.

So those who are going on into maturity will see that. God's foolishness turns out to be wiser than the wisdom of this world. His weakness is stronger than men's strength, and that's his purpose, is to confound the world.

Chapter 3, we saw that we are corporately a living temple of the Holy Spirit to the extent that we're building on the foundation of Christ. And the question is, what are we building? Are we building things of real worth, things of value on the foundation of Christ?

And specifically, do we support each other as members of a living temple? Or are we working destruction, destruction in the temple of God by that very same carnal, prideful attitude? Chapter 4, Paul applied those questions to himself.

You might look at chapter 4 for just a moment. I want to notice a verse that we didn't deal with at the time. It's a very interesting.

In fact, two verses, three and four, says, with me, it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. It's not interesting.

I do not even judge myself. The only one whose opinion I'm interested in is Jesus Christ. I don't even judge myself.

My perspective is too warped. I'm too close to it to be objective. I have too much self-interest.

I can't possibly be an accurate assessor of my own ministry. The only one who can is the Lord Jesus. His opinion is the only one that matters.

The Christian plays to an audience of one. Do you know that? Do you really believe it?

There will come a day when all of the criticism and all of the accolades of everybody else will wither away. And we will face the accurate reading of what we've done. Chapter 5.

This carnal, prideful attitude has led to carnal activity. we see that the sins of the flesh are really an outworking of something much deeper and much more basic. They're the obvious ones.

They're the level at which we confront each other much of the time, is those kind of obvious external things. But we're beginning to see now that the sins of the flesh, and in particular he's talking in chapter 5 about gross sexual immorality, has a much deeper basis in a spiritual problem. spiritual problem of pride and overvaluation of our own gifts and ministries and so on, attitudes lead to actions.

That's the unfortunate message of chapter 5. If you're not right at the center, eventually it's going to work out to your external relationships. And Paul calls for the purification of the visible church and that we would hold each other up to a high standard and we would in love call each other to obedience.

and if necessary, rebuke each other and even, as a last resort, if necessary, exercise church discipline. That's all part of the supportive ministry of being members of each other, of being living stones in a living temple or living organs in the body of Christ. Those are the two principal metaphors that we're developing here.

That's a part that most of us don't like to fuss with much of the time. It's one thing to go and pat somebody on the back. It's quite another to go and say, I think you're out of line.

But Paul says that's part of the package, and we've got to be willing to do it. And he calls us to a purity in the visible church as part of the ministry of being supportive to each other. Chapter 5, further development of the theme and a rebuke for them taking their grievances against each other to secular magistrates.

Better to settle their differences among themselves, he says, even if it means being defrauded. Permit yourself to be defrauded. It's more important than the scandal of Christians going before pagan judges to have problems settled between them.

And finally then, chapter 7, last time we looked at the sanctity of marriage and Paul's own opinion which he very carefully labels as such that singleness is preferable. Notice in chapter 7 verse 7 he says, I wish that all were as I myself am but each, that is both the single and the married each has his own special gift from God one of one kind and one of another. So your singleness is a calling.

And if you're called to singleness God gives you the gift of the ability to live within that discipline. Your marriage is a calling. And if God calls you to marriage He gives you the gift of being able to live within that discipline.

Special gifts from God. Now that's very quick and I just wanted to sort of call all of that back to freshness in our minds because I wonder if you can see a theme emerging out of all of this. Somebody put it into words.

What is the theme that ties all of this together thus far? It's the overriding concern. Several people said, yes, I see a theme.

Anybody? Is there intended for maturity? okay that's part of it I think there's a that's a very critical element which will come to the fore as we move into the final chapters of the book I think there's a deeper theme of which that's a part thank you John nothing is more important in the agenda of God's people than love for each other nothing nothing is more nothing is as important as the priority of love for each other. Notice how that touches on every single one of the issues. Your division, your party strife, your pride, your misunderstanding of the purpose of God's gifts, your immorality, your total breaking of the picture that God has given of His love for the church, namely the purity and sanctity of marriage.

Christians going before secular magistrates unable to deal with their problems amongst themselves. Every single one of the issues that we're touching on has an underlying theme that ties it together. Nothing is as important as the priority of love for each other.

I've said this over and over and over again. I'm going to say it tonight and I'm going to say it many times after tonight. Let's just hold our finger here.

Look back at John's Gospel. If you've not underlined them before, I want you to underline two verses and begin to commit them to memory. Chapter 13.

Verse 35. Jesus is speaking, and it's on this verse that we based our song. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples, namely by your great tape ministry.

by all the books you write by the marvelous buildings you erect by all the missionaries you send out by your great social programs by this will men know that you are who you claim to be do you see the implication of that verse that if we fail in the business of loving each other the world may legitimately conclude that we're a bunch of hypocrites. Now before God we may get in by the skin of our teeth but the world may legitimately conclude that we're a bunch of phonies. You can do all the other things all the social programs all the feeding of the poor all the sending out of missionaries all of the marvelous sermons and so on and so on and if we fail to love each other we're a bunch of hypocrites and phonies and the world can write us off now if that weren't bad enough look at what Jesus prays in John chapter 17 starting with verse 20 he says I do not pray for these only namely his immediate disciples but also for those who believe in them through their word who's that?

you and me down through one generation to the next of having received the gospel Jesus himself prayed on the night before his betrayal for you and me. And here's what he prayed. That they may all be one.

And the standard, in case you had any doubt about it, is with a oneness like unto his relationship with the Father. Even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that, here's the reason, the world may believe that thou hast sent me. That ought to send chills up and down your spine.

That Jesus is tying the success of his mission to your ability and mine to love each other. This is what Francis Schaeffer calls the final apologetic, the final proof, the proof of the pudding. Again, the thing that is going to convince the world is not the sermons and the books and the edifices and the missionaries and the social programs, the thing that's going to convince the world not only that we are who we claim to be, but that he is who he claims to be.

Jesus abandons his mission to the quality of our fellowship. That an outsider ought to be able to walk into this fellowship and sense something in the electricity between us that stops him dead in his tracks. He says, wow, I don't know what they've got, but I want it.

And when he finds out what the motive power is, he believes. Because it is so real, it's undeniable. That's what Jesus says.

How are we doing, friends? Nothing, nothing is as important. Nothing, do you believe that?

Nothing is as important. The quality of our worship, the quality of our preaching, as our love for each other. In a sub-theme, everything that God supplies is intended to aid us in this venture.

specifically, as Bill said, that ties in with the gifts. But everything, all gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit that God furnishes are to supply us in the business of loving each other. I know there are people in this parish who love Jesus and are not speaking to each other.

When we fail to love each other, our credibility is destroyed, the power and convicting witness of our preaching is robbed, and honor to Jesus Christ is taken away. Those are the stakes. Now watch for that theme because it becomes more and more intense as we move into the final part of the book.

Chapter 8 turns on a play on words, specifically on what it means to know. What is knowledge? Let's read this very quickly.

Concerning food offered to idols. We know, and he quotes a little proverb. Whenever you see in quotes, he's usually doing that.

He's taking a little saying that was common. We know that all of us possess knowledge. That, in fact, was a little proverb that the Corinthians delighted in.

They were so convinced of the superiority of their understanding and perception. All of us, they were the enlightened ones, possess knowledge. Knowledge, he says, puffs up.

It inflates the ego. It becomes a source of pride. But love builds up.

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if one loves God, one is known by him.

Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know, and again a little quote, a proverb, an idol has no real existence, and that there is no God but one. It's a paraphrase of the Shema, the sort of creedal statement of Israel. There is only one God.

The Lord our God is one Lord. For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. However, not all possess this knowledge.

But some, though being hitherto accustomed to idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience, being weak, is defiled. Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.

Only take care lest this liberty of yours somehow becomes a stumbling block to the weak. For if anyone sees you, a man of knowledge, at table in an idol's temple, might he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols. And so, by your knowledge, this weak man is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died.

Thus, sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of my brother's failing, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother to fall. The play on words is this, that there's a difference between knowing a fact, or knowing a doctrine, or even knowing a truth, quote unquote, an objective statement, and knowing a person.

And we can recognize that just in our own everyday experience. I could tell you at great length about my wife, and if you've never met her, you can accumulate knowledge about her, but you don't know her. And so we've all had the experience of hearing about somebody, and we say, I feel like I know that person already, but when we really meet them, it immediately changes, doesn't it?

It's a totally different thing to meet somebody. And we've had the experience that just a few moments with the person is infinitely more profound than reading books and volumes about him or her. We use the same word, and yet it's two entirely different things, because one is objective knowledge and the other is relationship, which takes two parties involved with each other.

We could translate that into a little picture of it, if you would. Maybe you've played the game, the parlor game, where you get a bunch of people standing around in a circle and the one in the middle is blindfolded. They say, do you trust me?

Fall backward and I'll catch you. Have you ever played that game or seen it? you know and you say well I trust you well go ahead fall backward I'm right here I'm not going to drop you well I'm not too sure now I know that the person is trustworthy I know that as a truth a fact right I know he's not going to let me hurt myself do I I know the fact but do I know the person Do I know his character? Do I know his trustworthiness?

To know the person is to entrust myself to him. You see that difference? There's a difference between an idea, even if it's a true idea, and a living relationship.

Knowing about God and knowing God are two different things. You can have right theology, but unless you're trusting God, you don't know him. The Corinthians have some right theology.

the question is is their relationship with God reflected in their theology and specifically in their actions and relationships with each other the truth that they know is twofold we need to sketch this out number one there is a real devil and he has legions of demonic followers angels and archangels who are on the side of Satan rather than God. And behind pagan worship and specifically behind idols, idolatry, is a spiritual realm that is a real realm. There really are gods with a small g, lords with a small l, who would seek to enslave and dominate and manipulate and harm us.

Okay? And it may be that people who are involved in idolatry or in some pagan religion have very good motives in their worship but the truth of the matter is that behind what they think they're worshipping are real spiritual beings whose own direction is absolutely antithetical to that of God. Now that's one truth.

The other truth is summed up in Martin Luther's great hymn but though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us we will not fear. for God hath willed his truth to triumph in and through us that in Jesus Christ we break the bondage the victory of Christ is absolutely complete the devil has no claim upon our lives we can thumb our nose in his faces he is no God though he claims to be and all of those spiritual beings who stand behind the religions of this world are nothing to us bondage is broken in our allegiance to Christ. Now that's the twofold truth and we know that.

And we know therefore that we are completely free. They have no claim upon us. Now the problem was that it was typical in Gentile society and specifically in Greece that when you went to the market and bought your food it would already have been dedicated to one or another of the deities.

So it wasn't that you necessarily had to go off to the local temple and participate in pagan ritual just buying your groceries. It may have involved you in paying some sort of deference to one or another idols or deities. Now the problem, meat in particular was offered up to the idols, to the deities who stand behind them.

What are you going to do about the eating of meat that has been offered to idols? You're caught between those two truths. I know that they're real.

I don't want to fool around with any other spiritual reality than that of God. Yet I know that they have no real power for the Christian who entrusts himself to Christ. I can walk right through the middle of a pagan temple unharmed.

Do I know that? Or do I know that? Do I know that as an intellectual concept?

Or do I know that as a fact of relationship with God? Some of us know it one way and some of us know it the other way. And some of the folks apparently in Corinth who have all their lives lived under that kind of teaching and that kind of belief find themselves able to say, yes, I agree with the concept.

Yes, I believe that doctrine. but when I sit down to eat that piece of meat, my conscience smites me. I feel guilty.

I'm uncomfortable. I feel like I'm offending against God, even though I know that I ought not to feel that, perhaps. Do any of you know folks who have been raised as Orthodox Jews and who have converted to Christ and who find themselves very uncomfortable when you serve them a ham sandwich or shell food, shellfish.

Same thing. They know that in Jesus Christ they're free, yet they've lived all their lives under that discipline and their conscience smites them. That's the problem.

And apparently, some of these Corinthian Christians were flaunting their freedom in the face of their brethren, other Christians who felt conscience-bound at the point of eating meat. Say, what's the matter with you? Don't you know that in Jesus Christ we're free?

Here, eat. Forcing freedom upon somebody is a self-contradiction. And that's what they were doing.

Not only flaunting, I'm free, but you ought to be also. And Paul says, the spirit of love would say just exactly the opposite. If I'm free to eat, I'm also free not to eat.

I don't have to eat. I remember an incident when I was growing up when they still had the rules about no meat on Friday for the Catholics. And our family entertained some friends who were Catholic, very unobservant Catholics.

They never went to church. And my father thought it was a real smart trick to serve them meat. And they were conscience-stricken.

And afterward, he was just crushed at the dynamics of what had happened. He didn't mean to hurt them, but it was just sort of an in-joke that nobody takes this seriously and you don't even go to church and of course it's ridiculous not to eat a good piece of steak tonight. They couldn't do it.

They did do it. And they were conscience-stricken afterward. Freedom respects the weakness of conscience of somebody else.

And Paul says love would support them in that. I remember when I was a little boy and I moved from Chicago back to Connecticut. And we changed one church situation that I'd grown up in and went into another in our new hometown.

And I had been taught in our earlier church back in Chicago that there was something absolutely awesome about the bishop's chair. I mean you tiptoed past it right? you held your breath when you went past the bishop's chair the rector would no more dream of sitting in the bishop's chair than he would dream of appearing naked in church on Sunday I mean it was absolutely forbidden it had an aura about it like the holy of holies and I came and it was time I was training to be an acolyte and I went in for acolyte training and a layman was teaching the class, and guess where he sat?

And I was absolutely sure that the church was going to open and we were going to drop right through. Now, I now think that that early training I got was absolutely excessive and wrong teaching. But what a terrible way he handled the correction.

I was smitten. I was destroyed by that. I was horrified.

Probably was the beginning of all my problems. There are lots of ways that this truth could be applied. We could spend the rest of the week just thinking about this.

The principle here, it applies in all sorts of ways. Some of us feel free to express ourselves in worship in certain ways that other people can't relate to. And where is the balance point of inflicting our freedom on them?

That's a self-contradiction, isn't it? In relationship to your marriage partner, one member might feel a freedom to enjoy certain sorts of physical intimacy that are offensive and conscience-smiting to the other. And we say, come on, if you really love me, come on, this is free and good and beautiful and joyful.

Same thing could happen before marriage. with one person wanting to go farther in the expression of intimacy than the other one might. Do you see what I'm saying?

Freedom is not freedom. When it's forced upon somebody, flaunting my knowledge of the truths of freedom is an abuse of the other person. The other person for whom Christ died, it's thereby a denial of God's love, it's thereby a denial of God himself, And finally, it's a denial of the very freedom that I claim to be enjoying, because I'm under some sort of compulsion to do it.

So even knowledge of a spiritual truth can be an occasion for pride, for spiritual pride, for carnality. And the real truth is expressed not in knowledge, but in love, in building up, in supporting. The problem here is that I might not only offend my brother, But I might actually encourage him to do something against his conscience, which for him would be sin.

In the Epistle to the Romans, Paul says, that which is not of faith is sin. If you feel that it's wrong for you, it's wrong for you. Be it smoking or drinking or whatever it is, if it's wrong for you, it's wrong for you.

Don't do it. Even if you could assent mentally to some objective statement that you ought not to feel that guilt. and if I use my freedom to encourage you to do something against your conscience I'm abusing you and I'm abusing Christ in the process chapter 9 if I were going to give this a title I would entitle it the freedom to forego my rights or Paul's freedom to forego his rights.

It eventually ties right back into the very same theme, but he begins with a new subject. And the subject is his apostolic right or his right as an apostle to financial support in particular and all the other pleasures that anybody else would enjoy. Specifically, he mentions such things as having a wife and traveling with her.

He says, I have just as much right to do this as anybody else. In particular, he elaborates his right to be supported financially by those to whom he's ministering. And he marshals four arguments in favor of that.

Verse 7, it's a custom in daily life. He says, who serves as a soldier at his own expense? who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit, who tends a flock without getting some of its milk.

That's the way life is. Your work provides remuneration for you to do that work. And why should that be any different when we come to preaching the gospel?

Secondly, the scriptures articulate this principle. And he elaborates all the way from verse 8 to verse 12. Do I say this on human authority?

Absolutely not. Does not the law say the same? For it is written in the law of Moses, you shall not muzzle an ox when it's treading out the grain.

He quotes from Deuteronomy chapter 25, verse 4. He says he's not really speaking about the ox, he's speaking about us. He shouldn't ask me to do a job and not expect me to receive compensation from it.

Thirdly, it's corroborated by the practice of the Jewish temple. Verse 13. Nevertheless, we've not made use of this right.

Sorry, I'm not reading far enough. Verse 13, do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple? And those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings.

And that goes all the way back to the book of Exodus. That when you bring your gift to offer in sacrifice or in thanksgiving, the priest takes his portion. That's how he lives.

The priest has no holdings of his own. He doesn't own property. He doesn't own a house.

He doesn't have flocks and herds because he lives off the tithe of everybody else. That's where the principle comes from of churches maintaining rectories and doing all sorts of things like that, is that the clergy live off of the gifts of God's people. It's given to God, but a portion of it supports the ministry, and that begins in Old Testament Judaism.

And fourthly, as if all of that weren't enough, the Lord himself commanded it. Verse 14. In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

You'll find that in at least two places in the gospel accounts. Matthew 10, verse 10, and Luke 10, verse 7. They're both saying almost identical things.

The laborer deserves his food. That's the way Matthew puts it. Luke puts it, the laborer deserves his wages.

And that statement is made in the context of sending out the 70. Jesus says, when you go out, don't take extra food, extra provision, don't take extra clothing, don't take more than one staff, and so on. Why?

Because people will support you by their free will contributions, and that's as it should be, because the laborer deserves his wages, his food. So you've got a fourfold argument from St. Paul as to the legitimacy, in fact, the absolute right of the apostles or other ministers to be compensated from their work. He says, not only financially, but, as I said, I also have the same rights as anyone else, to have a wife, to travel with her, to take her with me at your expense.

Just by the way, I'll note in passing that that further underscores the point we made last time, that the preferability that he expresses about singleness is only that. It's his own preferability. Because he says it is an absolute right of the clergy to be married.

The other apostles do so. Peter has a wife. The others have wives that travel with him, and that's their right.

I think it's preferable to be single, he says, but that's their right. That leads to some interesting implications. The church must not, should never have, forbidden marriage to the clergy.

It's their right. The first pope was married. But, says Paul, having made this case, I have chosen to forego my rights.

Verse 12 and verse 15 in particular, he says it. Verse 12, if others share this rightful claim upon you, do we not still more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.

Verse 15, almost identical words, but I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing this to secure any such provision. So he's made a very, very strong case for his right to be compensated in particular and to enjoy all the other pleasures of life that anyone else would have in general. But he says, I've chosen not to impose these rights upon you.

And why? Because I want to demonstrate to you as something above and beyond the call of duty, the call of apostleship, the call of ministry. I want to demonstrate in my relationship with you that the gospel is a free gift.

We recall that he worked during his ministry to the Corinthians as a tent maker. You can read about that in Acts chapter 18 with a couple named Achilla and Priscilla. They made tents, and he had a secular job.

He worked with his hands in order to provide his pay line. And he said, I did that as a deliberate decision. Rather than expecting you to provide my food, I did it really for two reasons.

The one I've already mentioned, so that you might make it even clearer than would otherwise be the case that the gospel is God's free gift to you. And secondly, that my only reward, he says, would be from God himself. Verses 17 and 18.

What then is my reward? Just this, that in my preaching I may make the gospel free of charge, not making full use of my right in the gospel. So we need to see a number of things from that, and I'm not going to elaborate it much further.

it would be absolutely wrong of a given body of Christians to demand or expect of those who minister to them that it would be free of charge. It is certainly the prerogative of those in that ministry to choose to forego their rights, but the expectation is that generally speaking those being ministered to would foot the bill. I'm very glad of that.

but Paul says this is a decision which I made freely and which should not have been and is not expected of me I made it as a gift to you and as an exception to the rule rather than as a norm for others and he draws all of this then back into the theme which he's been elaborating thus far and it's with this that the chapter ends I want to put no obstacle in anyone's way. I want to win to Christ those of every possible background and then build them up in him. It says, though, in verse 19, though I'm free from all men, I've made myself a slave to all that I might win the more.

To the Jews I became as a Jew in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under la. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law, not being without law toward God, but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside the law.

To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I've become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. I do this all for the sake of the gospel, that I might share in its blessings.

Now if you just observed that very superficially, if you kind of padded along after Paul and didn't understand where he was coming from, you might very well conclude that there was some sort of strange hypocrisy on his part. Sometimes he acts like a Jew, sometimes he acts like a Greek. But when you get inside his heart, inside his attitude, you see there's a totally different motive.

It's not out of some kind of chameleon weakness on his part. some kind of lack of backbone that he doesn't stand for anything. But it's a giving away of himself out of incredible sensitivity.

An application as broadly as he can possibly apply it of the very theme that he was bringing before us in the previous chapter. I am free to eat meat sacrificed to idols. Because I know they have no power over me.

I can laugh at idols. I can laugh at demons. I can laugh at Satan himself, but if you've got a problem with that, I'll never eat a piece of meat in front of you, lest it offend your conscience, lest it encourage you to do something that would make you guilty before God.

I'm free before God, and His is the only judgment I'm interested in, but if my conduct is going to create an obstacle and a barrier for you, then the exercise of my freedom becomes a self-contradiction and I'm not going to do it. If I'm free to eat I'm also free not to eat. And out of regard for you I'm going to take seriously where you're coming from and I'm going to do all I can humanly speaking to build you up not only by teaching but by behavior.

If you're a Jew I'm going to be sensitive to your Jewish background. If you're a Buddhist I'm going to try to be sensitive your Buddhist background. If you're weak, I'm going to share your weakness.

If you're strong, I'm going to try to share your strength, wherever you're coming from, says Paul. I'm going to try, up to the point of some sort of compromise before God, I'm going to try to conform myself to where you are. That on that level, I can share with you who Christ is and build you up.

I remember when our first child was just beginning to crawl. And I remember one day that she was having a very tough time. And I was talking to her and she was down on the floor kind of crying and I don't know what the problem was.

She couldn't articulate it. And finally I realized something just ran through my mind that I had never sort of thought about before and I'm sure all of you who are parents have thought about this but I can remember the moment it first hit me. what it must be like to be this big and feeling a pain of some sort that I can't express and look up that far at my father.

I got down on the rug, lay down with her, looked her in the eyes at her level, and a wonderful change came over her face just out of that expression of getting down to where she was. It wasn't a matter of words. It was a matter of bringing myself down to where she was.

That's what Paul's saying. To the weak I became as weak. To the Jew I became as a Jew.

To those who were out from under the law I became as one who was out from under the law. I've become all things to all men that by all means I might save some. There's the expression.

The exact opposite of that proud, arrogant, spiritual egotism that sees me as being so far above everybody else. Those poor, dumb, unwashed, faltering peasants down there, you know. Don't see the truth I see.

Don't have the gifts I have. Paul says, leave all that behind and get down there with them. And love them.

They'll know we're Christians by our love. So he says, concludes the chapter with yet another metaphor. Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize?

So run that you might obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.

Well, I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air, but I pummel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. What does he mean by that?

I pummel my body. I bring it under discipline. It's the exact opposite of self-indulgence.

Whatever the issue might be, rather than enjoying and insisting upon my rights to self-indulgence, be they in the physical or even in the spiritual realm, is I bring myself under discipline because I'm running a race and I want to win the prize. I want the wreath that is going to be lasting, eternal. And I know who I'm running for and I know whose opinion matters and I know the thing of infinite value and that's His commendation.

Let's bow for a moment. let's just be quiet before the Lord for just a moment deliberately ask him to put his finger upon attitudes or things in our lives that are somehow out of line with this teaching areas in which we've been proud and arrogant rather than humble and willing to divest ourselves of self perhaps there have been people at whose consciences we've laughed for their narrowness their uptightness perhaps there are freedoms that we flaunted perhaps God forbid it might even be that there are people who also belong to Christ against whom we're bearing grudges or who we know have grudges against us that we could do something about. Lord, we want to be those who live up to our profession that we belong to you.

we want to be those whose lives are in accord with that claim. We want to be those of whom it could never be said, what a phony, what a hypocrite. It's our desire, Lord, that our lives would not only bear witness to our being who we claim to be but would bring such honor by our love to who you claim to be that it would convince others.

Lord, show us relationships that need repair. Give us the courage to determine right now, right now, to repair those relationships. if your brother has something against you and you are offering your gift at the altar first leave your gift go and be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift to God. This concludes this teaching.