Reading: 1 Corinthians 2
We now
pass to the first letter to the Corinthians, and you will
notice that the point in the letter marked by chapter 3
begins with the definite statement that the trouble at
Corinth, the inclusive trouble, was spiritual immaturity.
They were babes, when it was time they had passed out of
babyhood. That was the trouble at Corinth.
The Spiritual Man Constituted of
God
So the
whole letter deals with the causes of too long delayed
maturity, and with that which is the basic factor for
such people with regard to spiritual growth. We can at
once state what this factor is. It is the key to this
whole letter, and is “spirituality”. Being the
key to this letter, it is, therefore, in all these
circumstances, the key to full growth. Spirituality is,
of course, set over against carnality. Spirituality is
essential to full growth. The second chapter is full both
of the fact and of the necessity. If we ask what
spirituality is, that chapter will answer the question by
telling us that it is a life wholly governed, taught,
illumined and led by the Holy Spirit; but not as from
without. This is just where we need to recognise a
difference. Here it is not a matter of the Holy Spirit as
an objective person or power coming along and, so to
speak, putting His hand upon us and telling us things and
turning us about, and giving us direction of that kind.
What the apostle clearly shows in this part of his letter
is that it is the kind of person we are. He speaks in
this chapter of two kinds of beings, the one whom he
calls the natural, or the soulical man, the other the
spiritual man; one, the man who is governed by his own
soul in every way, the other who is governed by the Holy
Spirit through his spirit, and thereby becomes a
spiritual man as over against the soulical man. So that
the spiritual man here is a kind of person, and that kind
of person has particular and peculiar kinds of
capacities, powers, abilities. He has faculties which are
not possessed by the other kind of man, the soulical man,
the natural man, and he is, therefore, endowed with
capacities which take you far beyond the highest range of
the natural man in apprehension, in knowledge, in
understanding, as well as in accomplishment.
That
point must be made perfectly clear, because some people
have a kind of mentality that to be wholly
Spirit-governed means that the Holy Spirit in some way
does all the turning about and governing, and directing,
almost objectively, as from the outside. The spiritual
man is not here represented as being in that position at
all, but rather as having been constituted a kind of
being in whom the Holy Spirit is. He is constituted a
spiritual man of spiritual intelligence, who is able, by
spiritual faculties and endowments, to come into a
wonderful knowledge of, and fellowship with, God Himself.
That is spirituality, and that is the very heart of full
growth.
It is
wonderful how the chronological order of these letters is
entirely upset in favour of a spiritual order. In Romans
you have the foundation of righteousness by faith; then
comes 1 Corinthians, and it is as though you got right to
the heart of the Person concerned, and having set Him in
a position, you begin to constitute something in Him, to
build up in Him. So that you find that it is a matter now
of having been placed in Christ by faith; Christ is in
you, and that is the beginning of everything, if Christ
is to be fully formed. And that is the meaning of
spirituality.
It is
seen in this letter, on the contrary, that carnality is a
mark of immaturity, and, more than that, it is a positive
hindrance to spiritual progress. With that you move
through the letter and you see the many marks of
carnality which are marks of immaturity. We might note
some of them, and this will help us to come to an
understanding of what spirituality really is.
Six Marks of Carnality as
Seen in 1 Corinthians
1) Leaning to natural wisdom
Here
in chapters 1 and 2 especially you see that carnality is
a leaning towards, and being governed by, what is
natural, what is of account according to man’s own
natural estimate. These Corinthians evidently had a great
admiration for human wisdom. They were in a centre of
human wisdom, and their national life was marked with
much of this admiration for the wisdom of men. They were
much occupied naturally in philosophical pursuits and
speculations, and so it was a part of their very nature.
It was Corinthian to be always leaning toward the
superiority of human wisdom, and the Corinthian believers
were evidently indulging in that kind of thing. We are
still very greatly influenced by the strength, the power
of human wisdom — and, of course, that carries power
with it! With the Corinthians knowledge was power. That
was their philosophy of life. The more human knowledge
you have, the more you come into a place of ascendency in
this world. It is a thing which puts you in a position of
advantage. Human knowledge is a real vantage ground for
success in this world.
The
apostle strikes some very hard blows at that natural and,
at the same time, carnal thing. It is natural, but when
it comes into the life of a believer it is a carnal
thing. The carnal is something more positive than the
natural. We are what we are by nature, but when you begin
to take up what we are by nature in the realm of what we
are by grace, and make something of nature in the realm
of grace, then you have become carnal: and that is evil.
So these two chapters are very largely occupied with a
tremendous unveiling of the utter foolishness of the very
thing in which these believers were glorying, and the
utter weakness of it all. Knowledge? Power? Getting an
advantage in this world? Very well! The world in its
wisdom, and in the wisdom which it called its power,
crucified the Lord of glory. What do you think of that?
They did it blindly. That is ignorance!
We are
not going to pursue that line further. We indicate it,
because it shows us a state of mind. It was the apprizing
of values according to natural and worldly standards, and
they were influenced by that, and that for them was
carnality, and therefore immaturity. That very thing was
the hindrance to their spiritual growth. Now, apart from
the thing itself, the principle is this, that a leaning
toward that which is natural, and, in so leaning toward
it, making it a factor in our lives as the children of
God, is a mark of spiritual infancy, babyhood,
immaturity; but moreover, it is a positive hindrance to
anything else. You may say it is hardly necessary to
stress that amongst the people of God today, but I am not
so sure. You know, as well as I do, that this is one of
the failings of the human heart in principle. We may be
perfectly convinced that the Corinthians were all wrong
and that Paul was perfectly right, that it was utter
foolishness in this wise world to crucify the Lord Jesus,
an altogether false idea of wisdom, of knowledge, and of
strength: well, we may be quite convinced of that, and it
may be that we might not fall quite in that way, but in
principle this thing is found in all of us.
There
is a tremendous amount of trying to win a way for the
Gospel, for Christ, for the Christian life by being even
with the world in some way. A young man, for example,
thinks that if he has something of a sportsman’s
training, and his achievements in the sporting world are
known, that he can use that as an advantage to win men
for Christ. So he does it, and he plays that off to try
and win the respect, the esteem, the hearing, the ear of
men, and in a way he is all the time going onto their
ground and thinking that he is going to win converts in
that way. It is this same thing in principle. If men can
only be won along such lines they are not worth winning;
you will not get the right thing. The only ground upon
which a man may be really saved is upon the ground of
such a need in his own heart, and recognised by him, that
he will come to Christ as a matter of life and death. If
he has to be won by your putting up something which
appeals to him on his own ground, there will be a
permanent weakness in his Christian life. Let us be
careful that even in our eagerness we do not compromise a
little, do not step over onto natural ground, which for
us would be sheer carnality. That is Corinthian ground;
it does not get beyond babyhood, the standards of men,
the world’s values of things; wisdom, and power, and
such like.
That
was the first thing in this whole matter of spirituality.
Spirituality has nothing to do with that. What does Paul
really mean? What does he say, in effect? He says: After
all, you may go down to men, with all your worldly
wisdom, and try to win them for Christ, but the natural
man cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God; he
is labouring under an absolute ban. Before a man can
understand the things of the Spirit of God he has to be
born again, and be a spiritual man in the very beginnings
of his new life. He must have something that no man
outside of Christ has. You are in a hopeless position if
you try to get down there onto his ground: “…we
received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit
which is from God; that we might know the things that
were freely given to us of God” (1 Cor. 2:12). These
Corinthians had the spirit of the world, and were trying
to be Christians with the spirit of the world; therefore
they were limited in their knowledge, their
understanding, their apprehension, and remained like
little babes who had never yet come to any kind of
personal knowledge. All that they had was what they had
been told.
2) Selectiveness on natural grounds
The
next phase of this carnality is seen in chapter 3 and
chapter 4. There you have selectiveness on natural
grounds. It is another phase or form of the leaning
toward what is natural. One says, I am of Paul; and
another says, I am of Apollos; and another says, I am of
Peter; and another says, I am of Christ. The apostle
deals drastically with it in these two chapters.
Carnality is set forth as that kind of thing where you
lean toward your own natural likes and dislikes amongst
men, amongst teachings. I like Paul as a man! I like
Apollos as a man! I like Paul’s line of teaching! I
like Apollos’s wonderful eloquence! I like
Peter’s line! They were, according to their natural
likes, selective on natural grounds, dividing up the
Lord’s servants and the Lord’s Body. Who will
be bold enough to say that he himself has never fallen
into that failure? It is quite natural to have such likes
and dislikes. It very often means that we have to put
something to death in us to listen to some people, to
have anything to do with them. We have to take ourselves
in hand, and say: I must seek if there is not something
there that is of the Lord, and for the time being shut my
eyes to the other that offends. It is quite natural to
say: I like so-and-so, and I would go anywhere to hear
so-and-so, but as for the other man I cannot get on with
him at all. That is carnality. “For whereas there is
among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal, and
walk after the manner of men? For when one saith,
I…” — Oh, we need not go further! That is
the heart of the matter, “I”. It ought to be
“Not I, but Christ”. Is there anything of
Christ here in these men? That is what we should be
after. The vessel may trouble me, may sometimes give me
bad times, but my natural inclinations are not the point
in question at all in such a matter; that is carnality
for me. It is all right for some people who do not
profess to be the Lord’s, but for me it is
carnality, a bringing of the natural into the realm of
the spiritual, and making it a governing thing.
Spirituality means that I am after whatever is of Christ,
no matter in what vessel it is brought to me. Again and
again it is clearly to be seen in the Word of God that,
had men taken account of the means by which God came to
them, they would have lost the blessing, and some were
dangerously near that, and some did lose it.
Israel
lost the blessing for that very reason. They were
offended with the Man Christ Jesus. “Is not this the
carpenter?…” Had He been some glorious
potentate from heaven they would have received the
message! Let us be careful. God tests us very often as to
the reality of our hearts, as to whether they are set
upon Himself, by bringing us a great blessing wrapped up
in a very unacceptable wrapping.
Spirituality
is the opposite of leaning toward natural selectiveness,
likes and dislikes. If you and I desire to go on to full
growth, this is one of the things that has to be
recognised and dealt with. It is a case of just setting
aside our natural life in the interests of the spiritual.
Such an opportunity is with us every day. Spirituality is
determined by how far we are ready to be led.
3) Lack of moral sensibility
We
pass on to chapter 5. It is a terrible chapter. Carnality
is here shown to us in a defectiveness of moral
sensibility. We are not going to stay with it, and yet we
should not just ignore it. Spirituality must work out in
real moral sensibility, sensitiveness, in such a way that
there is a mighty reaction in us from those tendencies of
nature that are downward in the moral sense. We are not
talking about not being tempted. Everyone is tempted. The
very fact that we carry with us a nature which is not
wholly purged from the roots and fibres of sin and the
fall, constitutes a ground upon which temptation comes to
us. There is no sin in temptation. At times there may be
some weakening; we may be more open for various reasons
to weakness than at other times, but the point is this,
that spirituality represents in us a revolt and a
reaction that in the presence of moral weakness turns
round, reacts against that. That is the work of the
Spirit of God in us, making us spiritual. At Corinth
there was not only the one who defaulted (we are not
going to judge that one), but what the apostle was
troubled about was that the assembly had not sufficient
moral sensitiveness to deal with that thing, and he had
to write them a strong letter to pull them up sharply
upon moral grounds, to cleanse the assembly. They did not
do it until Paul practically made them do it. There was a
low and inadequate moral sensitiveness about the
assembly; there was not a sufficient measure of
spirituality to react violently to that thing, and say:
We are defiled, we must put this away; we must purge
ourselves; we must stand before God without judgment in
this matter. They did not do it; they tolerated it, they
let it go.
We are
not applying this in any assembly way just now, but are
just saying that spirituality means a strong reaction to
the encouragement of anything unclean. I do not know how
necessary it might be to say a thing like that. There are
various forms of low moral sense, but in a spiritual
person, and in a spiritual assembly there will be
something which reacts against that, in conversation, in
talk, in looseness of any kind. Spirituality lifts onto a
much higher level. That again, then, is carnality, and no
individual life and no assembly of the Lord’s people
can grow to the fullness of Christ without that spiritual
sensitiveness which feels bad in the presence of anything
morally loose.
4) A spirit of variance
We are
not going to take up this next point at length, but we
notice that Paul in chapter 6 comes to that kind of
carnality which shows itself in wronging one another, and
then trying to obtain one’s rights by lawsuits. He
commences by speaking of the lawsuits in verse 1, but he
gets behind that as he goes on and says that they are
robbing one another. Any kind of suit before the world,
or in the church, ought to be rendered unnecessary by the
getting rid of this wronging of one another. What a low
level amongst the Lord’s people is revealed when
they rob one another.
There
are more ways than one of robbing the Lord’s people,
but it is the principle that is in view, the failing to
recognise the rights of the Lord’s children. If it
is wrong for a child of God to stand up for his rights,
and to fight for them, it is equally wrong that the
rights of the Lord’s people should be ignored or set
at naught. There is an honouring of one another, and that
of which Paul speaks elsewhere, a looking of everyone,
not upon his own things, but upon the things of others;
that is, taking into account that others also have a
right to be honoured, to be respected, to be given a
place. It seems that the spirit here at Corinth was that
of the individual seeking to have the advantage, even at
the expense of another believer. It is the spirit of the
thing that is the trouble behind it all. Spirituality
would be just the opposite of this, that even if one were
wronged one would not fight for one’s rights,
especially before the world. Spirituality would mean, in
an assembly and amongst the Lord’s people, and on
the part of each individual, a mutual recognition and
holding in honour because — as Paul leads this whole
thing out, as we shall see in a moment — we are
members one of another, members of the Body.
I like
the wisdom of the Holy Spirit through His servant Paul,
as this whole matter is headed up to chapter 12. Just
imagine one member of the Body going to law against
another member of the same Body! What sense would there
be in one hand fighting the other hand, or in my fist
assailing any other part of my body? That
is perhaps a crude way of putting it, but Paul now
applies the point in that way and says: You are all
members of one Body, and you are all interdependent, you
cannot do without another, and that member that will go
to law with another is but robbing himself. It is so
foolish, so senseless, so weak! All such things are
evidence of a poor level of spiritual life. Spirituality
will show itself in recognising the value of every
member, and, rather than in doing a member harm, in
respecting and honouring that member, because of the
necessity for that one. We need one another, and
therefore it is the utmost childishness in a spiritual
sense to be at variance with one another. Spiritual
maturity will never condone that course. If we did but
know it, our attitude towards another child of God comes
back upon ourselves, and becomes our attitude towards
ourselves. That is how God orders it, because the Holy
Spirit is the Spirit who governs and balances the whole
Body.
I
think there is no realm in which the laws of God operate
more immediately and directly than in the Body of Christ.
“He that soweth unto his… flesh shall of the
flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth unto the
Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap everlasting life”.
“Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap”. Within the church of God those laws operate
in a very immediate and direct way. Spirituality takes
all that into account and says: I am not going to injure
my own spiritual growth by doing harm to another member
of Christ; I am not going to be robbed of God’s end
for me by failure to recognise that another also should
be helped towards that end.
5) Failure to discern the Body
In
chapters 10 and 11 we come to the failure to discriminate
(discern) the Lord’s Body. It is all wrapped up in
the long discussion of things offered to idols, and that
point where one thing ends and another thing begins. The
Lord’s Table in the apostolic days was not like our
Table of the Lord. We gather to the Lord’s Table and
there is something quite distinct, quite by itself; there
is no mistaking what that represents. In apostolic times
they took their meal together, and at a certain point in
their meal time they stopped and worshipped, and for the
purpose took of the same food as they had been eating and
drinking; they turned their ordinary meal into a
corporate worshipping of the Lord. The apostle here says,
You may come in hungry to your meal, and sit down and eat
heartily, and just overstep the line, and in so doing
confuse the two things and make that which represents the
Lord’s Body and the Lord’s Blood a part of your
feasting to the gratification of your own appetite. We
are not in the same position to fall quite into the same
snare, but there is a principle bound up with it upon
which the Lord through His apostle puts His finger.
Terrible
things resulted from that in the Corinthian church: for
this cause many were sick, and not a few died. There was
this other element, as we have noted, that a good deal of
what they were eating and drinking in the ordinary way
had already been offered in the shambles, and had already
been offered to heathen gods, and they were not
discriminating. But the principle underlying is this,
that this loaf, this cup speak of two things. Firstly,
they speak of the covenant relationship with the Lord, in
which everything in our lives is for the Lord, and in
which the Lord is everything to us; we have gone out, and
Christ has come in, and for us Christ is the centre and
the sphere, the sole object of our lives. They also speak
of this, that Christ’s Body, the church, has taken
its place in our interest as that upon which the love of
Christ is set, even unto death. “Christ loved the
church, and gave himself up for it.” It is “the
church of God, which he purchased with his own
blood”. Again, it is written, “Husbands, love
your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and
gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it, having
cleansed it by the washing of water with the word, that
he might present the church to himself a glorious church,
not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing…”
The attitude of the believers toward the church is to be
the attitude of Christ toward the church. Spirituality is
that which, on the one hand, gives Christ His place over
all that is personal, and enables us to subordinate
everything to His interests. There was a failure in this
respect at Corinth, and a yielding to personal
gratification, instead of glorying in the Lord.
Spirituality is just the opposite of that, and so
spirituality is a mark of growth. We shall never come to
full growth spiritually if we are just going to be
governed by our natural appetites.
Then,
on the other hand, spirituality is marked by love of all
the Lord’s people. At Corinth, again, there was
failure to recognise Christ’s love for His church.
Their attitude one toward another was therefore anything
but that of Christ for His own, and so they did not
discern the one Body as represented at the Table. Paul
says, “The loaf which we break, is it not our common
participation in the body of Christ? Seeing that we, who
are many, are one loaf, one body: for we all partake of
the one loaf.” The Lord’s Table is the Body in
representation. We must recognise that Christ’s
object of love and devotion is His church, and have the
same love and devotion to His people and for His people
as He had. Let us put that quite simply. A truly large
spiritual life is marked by a great devotion to the
Lord’s people, to the Body of Christ, as over
against an undue measure of individualism.
6) The coveting of spiritual gifts for
personal ends
The
last feature of carnality which we will note is that
which comes up in chapter 7 in connection with spiritual
gifts. It is strange that this matter should come up into
the realm of carnality and spiritual immaturity, and yet
it does. I do not see how we can get away from the fact,
if we honestly read this chapter, that the apostle was
dealing with this very matter of spiritual gifts from the
same standpoint as he was dealing with the other things
at Corinth. What was the trouble? It is one which perhaps
we think we need not fear. The first part of chapter 12
indicates where the trouble was. We cannot stay with
verses 1-3, to consider them in detail, but there is a
great deal there that it would be very much to our good
to recognise. On the face of it there is this: these
Corinthians before they came to the Lord were pagans to
this degree that they were occupied with spiritism, and
in spiritism (often termed “spiritualism”)
there is a definite system of counterfeit Holy Ghost
activity. Spiritism as we know it today can produce
speaking in tongues, and all the other things, such as
powers, miracles, and so on. The whole system here is
counterfeited in spiritism. I believe that spiritism is
going to be the great ally of Antichrist, the counterfeit
of Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and thereby many will be
carried away. The paganism of these Corinthians is seen
in their being carried away to those dumb idols, and in
connection with idol worship there were spirit
manifestations, and they came under a false Holy Spirit
(if we may use that term). The Greek is striking there,
and it is perfectly in keeping with the thought of coming
under a spiritual power, so that you act and speak as
under control. The apostle is here using it concerning
people who are under the control of a power. If you are
under the control of an evil spirit you will not say,
“Jesus is Lord”. The evil spirit will not say
that.
The
point is this, that there was not amongst these people at
Corinth a clear discrimination between spiritism and the
Holy Spirit. Here you have come to the heart of the
trouble. They had been in the false thing, and had now
come into the true thing, and were not discriminating.
Why were they not discriminating? Because they were so
taken up with experiences, manifestations,
demonstrations, sensations, that which is apparent
evidence of something. That is the danger. The danger is
of wanting an experience, wanting a proof, wanting to
have a sensation. That is carnality, and you will mix the
Holy Spirit up with spiritism if you are not careful
along that line, and multitudes are doing it. The devil
is getting his advantage along that line in many people.
They think it is the Holy Spirit when it is a false
thing, simply because they want something. That is why
the apostle goes so steadily at this matter. He says in
effect: “Be careful; do not put things in their
wrong place; do not give importance to things which are
not so important as you think they are. Speaking in
tongues is not so important as you are making it out to
be. It is one of the least of the gifts.”
Do you
see the point? You have to recognise the meaning of these
first three verses in chapter 12. It was failure to
discriminate between the true Holy Ghost and the false.
Then
as to the rest of the chapter, we see from verse 12 to
verse 27 that they were not recognising the relatedness
of gifts. That is the safeguard, to recognise that. There
are the gifts of the Holy Spirit, real, genuine, and
true; we are not going to put them aside because of false
gifts. At the same time we have to watch the balance, we
have to have spiritual understanding, spiritual wisdom in
this matter. The Corinthians were taking the things as
personal, in a detached and individual way, and making
something of them because it was a wonderful and
marvellous experience: and with them it all ended there.
Why did Paul write the whole of that section on the Body
of Christ, and why did he come into it so livingly?
“There are diversities of gifts, BUT (now
comes the check — everyone is glorying in that phase
of the diversity that has come to them) the same
Spirit…” “There are diversities of
ministrations, but the same Lord”. “There are
diversities of workings, but the same God who worketh all
things in all”. You need to weigh every fragment
— it is “the same God who worketh all
things” in all the members, in all the Body —
“To each one is given the manifestation of the
Spirit to PROFIT WITHAL”. Then when you have
enumerated the gifts you come to this statement:
“For as the body is one… so also is the
Christ.” The article is used there. You have got to
the heart of things. Spiritual gifts? Yes! What for? For
me to glory in, to be gratified by, to talk about MY
experience? Ah, this is the test. Is the whole Body
profiting? Is the one Lord being glorified? Is this whole
matter related and working out to mutual increase? This
is a corporate matter, not an individual matter at all.
If you detach it and take it out of its relatedness, you
divide its end, which end is the building up of the whole
Body and the mutual increase. What is the result at
Corinth? They have made this whole thing an individual,
personal matter, unrelated, in which they themselves
glory. They came perilously near to a most awful sin in
failing to discriminate between spiritism and the Holy
Ghost, all by reason of their desire, their love for
something that brought a sense of satisfaction to
themselves, pleasure to themselves, gratification to
themselves. That is carnality. That is immaturity.
All
that may be in a measure instructive or enlightening, but
you see how strongly this letter comes down upon the need
for real spirituality, and what spirituality is.
Spirituality does not hold anything of the Lord’s
for itself, and never makes anything from the Lord the
ground of its own pleasure and gratification, and
personal, individual, unrelated glorying. Spirituality
holds everything in relation to all saints, unto the
increase of Christ. It sees no value in anything apart
from that. So the apostle goes on with his corrective.
Two
things stand out when you have taken the whole of this
letter.
The Natural Man Wholly Put Away in
the Cross
First
of all right at the beginning the cross sets aside the
natural man absolutely. “I determined to know
nothing among you save Jesus Christ, and him
crucified”. Paul acted upon the principle of the
cross when he said, “I was with you in weakness and
much… trembling…” There was nothing in
Paul naturally, had he desired to come on to that ground,
that would have enabled him to be amongst them in
anything other than of weakness and fear and much
trembling. But he was acting on the principle of the
cross. He says it was deliberately done in order that
their faith might not stand in the wisdom of men, but in
the power of God. What they needed to know was the
difference between natural power, wisdom, and all that is
of nature, and the true power of God in the Holy Ghost.
The cross sets aside the whole life of nature, and opens
the way for spirituality and full growth.
The Essence of Spirituality is
Love
Secondly,
when all has been said, the essence of spirituality is
love (chapter 13). “Though I speak with the tongues
of men (terrestrial voices) and of angels (tongues not
known amongst men, heavenly language), and have not
love” — I am a most spiritual person? Not at
all! — I have made a great deal of progress in
spiritual life? Not at all! I am what? “I am become
sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.” So much,
then, for an entire want of spirituality, even though you
may have tongues. Paul writes the word
“nothing” over a great many things that we
naturally would think were very important: faith to
remove mountains, the giving of the body to be burned,
and so on — he writes “nothing” over every
one of them. Not that they are of no account in
themselves; these things are of account in their place,
and in their connection, but if they are without love
they are “nothing”. The essence of spirituality
is not the gifts, it is the grace. We are not going to
choose between gifts and graces, between gifts and love.
That is not the point of all. The apostle does not intend
us to take this attitude: Oh well, give me love; I do not
want gifts. I let go of all the gifts if you will only
give me the love. Paul is trying to make it clear that
these things in themselves can be held carnally. Really
to reach the end for which God gives them they must be
held spiritually, and the essence of spirituality is
love. It covers everything.
We go
back to the beginning now, and start again: Wisdom,
strength, divisions, schisms, lusts, all of them go out
when love comes in. So he closes thus: “The grace of
the Lord Jesus and the love of God, and the fellowship of
the Holy Spirit be with you all.” That is what you
Corinthians need. Undoubtedly the apostle summed it all
up in what we call the “Benediction”.