Speaking in Christ

Good morning. The passage that Courtney read for us here starts off with, you have it this way on the top of your handout. There's this interesting kind of poetic pattern that the first part of the passage falls into, verses 14 through 19. And so we have things highlighted, underlined, italicized, things of that sort, so that those patterns will show up.

One of the things that comes out early in this is Paul is going to be heading to Corinth here for a third time. He's made two trips previously and is now, as revealed here, going to be heading back to there. And there's a certain anticipation as he heads back to Corinth.

He certainly is planning and he makes it clear not to be a burden to them at all. Unlike the false apostles that have been there, he's not looking to them for support. But since they are a young church, one of the things that becomes clear in the early part of this passage we're looking at here, he sees himself somewhat in the role of a spiritual parent. And he puts that out there early in the passage. He is going to be spending his own resources, although we have clues that some of the other churches are, in fact, supporting him by this time. But he wants not to have them giving out funds for his support time anyway. but he intends to bring them up in the Lord from resources either from himself or from other churches.

He's doing it, why? All out of love for them. He wants to make it clear. I love you so. He lays it out very clearly. There isn't any hidden motive. There isn't anything that he's hiding from them. He doesn't want anything from them other than what he has exactly said right out. He is doing it because he loves them. There's no question about it. He says it repeatedly.

He would hope that they would respond in love as well, that they would have a love response to his love. But here's something very interesting. His love for them is not dependent. upon them having a love response. Very important distinction there. So he says, ready or not, I am coming. I hope you're ready. Let's talk about that. He uses a little facetious, sarcastic language, if you will. He writes, I took you in by deceit.

Well, he was so crafty and tricky and sly among them as he did his ministry work, he didn't even charge them a thing. I don't know how he did it. How did he pull it off? What a deceptive and crafty thing for him to do. He came in among them and worked among them and didn't ask any money at all. Oh, what an incredibly sly thing for him to do.

Neither Paul, and he makes the point, nor had anyone else that he had sent ask for anything from them. How could there possibly be some hidden motive? He wasn't asking for anything from them at all. The way he has written this, it almost appears as if somebody has made an accusation. And he's responding, why sure, I'm deceitful. I came to you and worked among you and didn't ask a single thing. That's terribly deceitful of me. Right? This was in contrast, however, to these false apostles that had come among them, where they were indeed taking them for what they could get.

Well, we have this slide that we've shown several times through the study. This is the last time that we've shown it. And it lists the passages where it says, in the sight of God, or in one case, in the sight of the Lord, from near the beginning to near the end. So here we are in 219, in the sight of God. One of the things that's become abundantly clear is this in the sight of God is not something where God is looking and watching like big brother and just waiting to catch him doing something wrong. That's not the perspective, is it?

And that's a good thing. One of the things that's important for us as believers to soak in is the Lord is not doing things so that he can catch us. As a matter of fact, one way to put it, the Lord is not watching us so He can catch us doing something wrong. He wants us to be walking in fellowship with Him. The watching is not so He can catch us doing something wrong, but it's a part of our fellowship and intimacy with Him. That's the point. God is not watching like Big Brother. He's not watching, waiting for the moment when He can say, Instead, he is watching carefully everything because he loves us.

It's part of the intimacy that he intends to have with us. And Paul is repeatedly laying out in this book from near the beginning to near the end. We do everything in the sight of God. He sees everything anyway, but it's a part of the ongoing relationship that we have with him. It's part of that expression of fellowship that we have with Him. That He knows everything that's going on.

Not like Big Brother, ready to catch you doing something wrong. But as one who has a relationship with you. In verse 19, He uses this term, speaking in Christ. You see, He had told these believers right at the very beginning. First book, first chapter.

In 1 Corinthians 1.30, He says, but by His, that is, in the context, God's doing, you're in Christ Jesus. How are you as a believer in Christ? Not because you've tried really hard, not because God grades on the curve and says, well, you're not doing too badly. You are in Christ by faith alone. God did the placing of you in Christ. It was all God's accomplishment, not something that we merited at all.

He'd even told them right at the beginning. Can you imagine this church? He's going to tell them later on, you're fleshly. He's going to tell them, you guys are squabbling with one another. You're even taking one another to court. But before He says anything about any of their very many and persistent problems, He's going to tell them in 1 Corinthians 1. to the church of God which is at Corinth to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus.

And the original language there means permanently sanctified with continual results. If you're already sanctified, that's not an issue. What does sanctified mean? It means set apart and made holy for God's intended purpose. God's already done that in your lives.

So now he's telling them that everything he's been writing all the way along. And one of the things we've made note of is the clues are that this is actually the fourth letter, at least, that he has written them. Everything that he's been writing has come from that position in Christ. Everything is consistent with that position that they have in Christ, Paul included. You have the poetic pattern there in verses 20 and 21. It's shown on the slide there on page 2.

And it's interesting. I mean, there's a lot of it that is certainly comparable. He starts off both 20 and 21 with, I am afraid that. And he talks about when he comes. Then he's got an interesting thing. There is the flesh and the church section there in verse 20. He says, that perhaps there will be strife, jealousy, angry tempers, disputes, slanders, gossip, arrogance, and disturbances. In verse 21, the flesh in the world sinned in the past and not repented of the impurity, immorality, and sensuality which they have practiced. So what's he talking about? Verse 20 is about the interactions between the believers And it's basically interactions that are from the flesh, the sinful nature governing the interactions in the church.

One of the things that has crossed my mind when I look at this, have you ever heard the term church politics? Ever heard that? I even had a doctor's appointment one time, and I went to the doctor. Of course, people ask me what I do, and then it usually silences them completely. In fact, my brother says every time he gets jury duty, as soon as he says what he does for a living, he's a pastor, he's immediately dismissed. Anyway, so I get in there and the first question after I say I'm a pastor, the first question after that is, how can you handle the church politics? Well, guess what?

Church politics is uniformly of the flesh and of the world. God does not intend church politics. It's not in God's design. As a matter of fact, church politics is exactly like the last half of verse 20. Right? That's the strife and jealousy and angry tempers and disputes and slanders and gossip and arrogance and disturbances. That's church politics. And he says, I'm afraid what I'm going to find when I come there is church politics. The last part there in verse 21 then is talking more about the flesh interacting with the world and on the basis of the world's example. Let's take a look at verse 20 here in the last part.

If we look at 2 Corinthians 12 20 and compare that with in Galatians 5 where Paul wrote to the church at Galatia and he gives the deeds or works of the flesh And it's interesting, when you get into Galatians 5.20, the Greek words are identical and even in the same order between these two passages. The one difference in the English, at least in the New American Standard, is angry tempers in 2 Corinthians and outbursts of anger in Galatians 5. In the Greek, it's the exact same word. So we have those four words, the exact same order between those two passages.

He's saying, what I'm afraid I'm going to find is the works of the flesh when I come to the church there. He could summarize it and say, what I'm afraid I'm going to find is church politics. So these words in sequence and in exact original language is the same. The strife and jealousy, anger, dispute, slander, gossip, arrogance, disturbances, they are all of the result of the believers walking in the flesh and not in fellowship with Christ by the Spirit.

Church politics is a contradiction in terms. Yeah. Why Why would I say that? The reason is, what does God intend in the church? Believe me, it's not the politics. Why have you been made to be in Christ and Christ in you? Not for the sake of church politics. You have been made to be in Christ and Christ in you. so that you might walk in fellowship with and in dependence upon Him. And that doesn't look like strife. That doesn't look like bickering, does it?

It was a personal problem, certainly, that they had there in the church. Each individual believer who was carrying out this church politics behavior had a problem with walking the flesh, and it was an ugly problem for the whole church, too. It was an individual problem. It was a whole church problem. There was, in fact, a God-given solution for this problem. Paul was praying and teaching, and I would say hoping, that they would take the God-given solution instead of continuing on the path that they were.

But let's take a look at verse 21 now. The last part of that. This is the flesh and the world. In verse 21, we have the words impurity, immorality, and sensuality. And those same words, not in the same order, are found also in Galatians 5, 19 through 21. These are largely sexual in character. This impurity means uncleanness, not clean. Immorality is this word pornea.

We get our modern word pornography from that same Greek word. And it's interesting, as Nancy and I often do, we'll talk about the passage during the week. And I'll have her read over what I've written just to try to catch all my mistakes. But she asked the question, what is sensuality? And I put it to her this way. I said, sensuality is an idolatry of the senses. Idolatry of the senses.

What is idolatry? You see, when we think of an idol, we tend to think of some little thing made out of stone or wood or metal. Something we bow down to. But an idol ultimately is not just the object. An idol is anything else that calls the shots in our lives apart from God Himself.

And so we as people can do what people in the world do, and that is we can say, boy, I tell you, no matter what happens, I want to have my senses. call the shots in my life. Boy, I've got to pursue this sensation or that sensation and put that first. That's what sensuality is. It's an idolatry of the senses. Above everything else, top priority, I've got to have that sensation because I like it.

The raw pagan culture in Corinth was such that These kinds of things, this impurity, immorality, the sensuality, certainly those were problems throughout the Roman Empire. But Corinth was the capital. Corinth was the capital, even to the point that there was a word for immorality used in the Greek language that took the word Corinth and made it into a verb. It'd be kind of like we would have said, well, they're Denverized, right? Kind of in that form.

You see, what had happened is that pagan religious practices, the things that they did, which were oftentimes connected to the temple, not always, the things that they did were made into a religious practice. Religious practice. The common thing in the Roman Empire and among the pagans would be to have some sort of a sacrifice to the pagan gods and then to have some food and or sexual orgy and then to end it up with another sacrifice and it was all made into a religious practice and many of the believers were still caught up in this They, as many of the pagans also viewed things, they couldn't see the distinction between those pagan practices and Christianity. And he said, you guys still don't get the point. You're still hung up in making these places and things, these practices of immorality, of sensuality, of impurity, you're making them into religious practices.

Some of the saints in Corinth just couldn't get it. They couldn't shake it and they couldn't see the distinction. They couldn't see that Christ in them and they in Christ called for something quite different. So they were still drawn by everything that the world offered and sucked in.

There was and is a God-given solution. We're going to see that in a minute. But one of the things he presents to them is repent, a change of mind. Now, what is repentance? Is repentance when you come up here and come up the aisle and you kneel down here. I'm sorry, there isn't more of a step here. But when you kneel down here and feel really, really bad for your sins. No, I don't mean bad. I mean really, really bad for your sins.

You know? That kind. Alright? And is that repentance? Is repentance when you get really, really emotional? Is that what it is? Is that what God wants? No. Repentance is a change of mind. Now let's talk about what that means. You see, if a believer is going to go along thinking that dependence upon the flesh, walking in the flesh, and punching the sin nature's time clock, so as to work for the wages of sin is just fine. Well, that's a problem. The wages of sin is death. If you want wages for sin, you'll get paid. Don't worry about it. You'll get paid. The payment is there. Believe me. You don't have to worry about getting paid. The paycheck will come every time. What are the wages? Death. Death. That's the wages. Death.

For the believer. What do we mean by death? Doesn't mean you lose your salvation. Doesn't mean you're not going to walk through heaven's gates. You will. But for a believer, that death means lacking fellowship with God. Separated from Him, not in the eternal position, but for every moment that we walk apart from Him. That's death. because he's the only source of life. So there has to be a change of mind, a change of perspective about things.

It doesn't mean, however, that God is happy if believers just stop doing the wrong thing. I talked to an unbeliever at one point in time. Believe me, I do that sometimes. I talked to an unbeliever at one point in time, and he said, I can always tell who the Christians are. I said, how can you tell who the Christians are? He says, those are the people that don't do anything. They do nothing.

But one of the key points, and I think it's real important for us to note, Romans 7.15, 19 and 21, Galatians 5.17, both those passages say that we cannot just choose to do the right thing and choose not to do the wrong thing. That's right. We cannot simply say, well, I'm going to do the right thing. I'm not going to do the wrong thing. And that's not what God wants. See, many Christians, they'll focus on, I'm not supposed to do something. But they miss out the point. That's not what God wants.

One of the ways I put it to Hassan when he was here is that I'd come to him and he got to a point where he laughed after a while, maybe not initially, I would say, Hassan, if you want to live life by not doing things, let me tell you what that's like.

Hassan, do not think of a pink hippopotamus. I'm not kidding you. Do not think of a pink hippopotamus. You know that pink hippopotamus? Don't think about it. Guess what you're thinking about? Exactly the thing, exactly the thing that we say, oh, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this. That's what we're thinking about. So that's not going to do it. It's not going to do it.

God does have an answer here, though. See, since we were all baptized into Christ, that is, immersed into Him, if you're a believer here today, that's true of you. We died in relationship to that sin nature. When the sin nature, when it's acting through this fleshly human body, is called the flesh. When Christ died on the cross, everyone who believed died with Him. We died to three things, and one of those is we died to the sin nature. One other key thing here is, and when Christ died, you were also bought with a price. You're not your own. See, we tend to think that when Christ died on the cross for our sins, that that's all that happened. That's not at all all that happened. He died for our sins? Yes. And we died to the sin nature. And you're not your own.

You're bought with a price. In the church building where Nancy and I were married, that was back in the ancient history of 1973, right? In the front of the church building, there's a large engraving in wood. It says, You are not your own. You are bought with a price.

You're not your own. You're bought with a price. See, our tendency is to think that we're making decisions about ourselves, for ourselves. And, you know, I'm my own person. No, you're not your own. You've been bought with a price. I don't have the right to just go making decisions by myself for me.

That's not what God intends. But here's the key, and this was my point in emphasizing with Asan, don't think about a pink hippopotamus. Because the other part of this is you're alive to God. If we don't take advantage of the alive to God part, we won't get there. It's like a bridge that goes halfway across the river. It's got to go all the way. And the alive to God part is absolutely essential. Just like the other half of the bridge is essential.

I'm going to zero in on Romans 6.11. Even so, you must consider, reckon, count, figure it out, yourselves to be dead to that sin nature and alive to God. Notice that last phrase, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Absolutely essential. Being alive to God is why we can abide in Christ.

That's something we've been studying the last couple of weeks in our Thursday night study over at the Matthews house. I am the true vine. My Father is the vinedresser. Abide in me and I in you. We can abide in Him. That's life in Him, not just I'm not going to do that wrong thing. we can behold Him. That's being alive to Him.

2 Corinthians 3.18, we looked at some months back, but we all, believers, with unveiled faith, that is, not relying on the law, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed. Beholding as in a mirror, as beholding the Lord through the Word of God, are being transformed in the same image from glory to glory, growing in glory. Justice from the Lord is the work of the Spirit. We can behold Him, being alive to God. That's how this repentance takes place. We're not alive to the sin, not alive to the world. We're dead to the sin. We're dead to the world. We're alive to God.

Being alive to God is why we can abide in Christ, behold Him, and live in fellowship. God is faithful through whom you were called into fellowship with the Son. There's another thing he wrote to the believers at Corinth right at the very beginning. You were called into fellowship with the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

What's the difference between relationship and fellowship? It's an important distinction. One of the ways I put it before, and I'll embarrass Randy here if that's possible. One of the ways I put it before is this. If I said something to, say, Randy's family that was extremely offensive, and Randy called me up and said, Dad, you just can't come over to our house for a while. We just got to cool down. Okay? Because I said something that was so awful. We would still have a relationship. as father and son, right? But that would break our fellowship. See the distinction there?

The relationship is not at issue. If you're a believer, your relationship with the Lord is never at issue. Your fellowship is what's at issue. It's not a question of who you are eternally. You're in Christ and Christ is in you. But it is a question of right now, am I having fellowship with the Lord? And finally, to grow in the grace and knowledge of Him. It's because we're alive to God that we can grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord.

You don't grow otherwise. By the way, if you just don't do things, that's not growing. Okay? If we'd say, well, I haven't done this, and I haven't done that, and I haven't done this thing, and I haven't done that, well, that's too bad. Because that's still not a life to God. It's the fellowship with Him that needs to happen. It's the abiding with Him that needs to happen. And when we do that, then there's growing in the grace and knowledge of Him. And we don't get there by just not doing the wrong things. There isn't any substitute for that.

As we look at these things, is God Is God occupied with sin? Is He just so focused on sin that that's all He can think about? And so that's all He wants you to think about? No! He just wants the sin out of the way so that He can have fellowship with you. That's why He wants the sin out of the way. It's not that He's preoccupied with sin. He wants you to be occupied with Him. That's why He wants the sin out of the way. Isn't that simple? Isn't that really good news? Isn't that gracious news? God is not waiting to say, aha, I gotcha! Oh boy, you're going to get it. God's not waiting like that.

He's saying, oh, how I long for fellowship with you. How it delights my heart to have fellowship with you. Let's just get the sin out of the way so that we can join again in fellowship together. That's why I sent my son to have fellowship with you. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing grace? Let's pray. Lord, we thank you.

Your grace is indeed amazing. We thank you that you long for and desire to have fellowship with us. And the repenting isn't about just feeling really bad or coming up front and wearing out the front step. But the repenting is a change of mind in order to have fellowship with you again. And so we look to you, Lord, just to work in our hearts your most amazing grace. We thank you for it. We praise you. In Jesus' name, amen.