Galatians 5:22-23, Paul says, but the fruit of the Spirit is, not the decoration of the Spirit, not the personality of the Spirit, fruit, the old life fractures a community into rival desires. The Spirit grows a life that begins to look like Christ and Paul begins with love, to feel why love has to come first, you have to step into another church where spiritual people were becoming dangerous to each other. Corinth was not quiet, it was wealthy, competitive, public and status conscious, it sat on trade routes where money moved, sailors arrived, reputations were made and bodies were used. People knew how to climb, they knew how to boast, they knew how to rank themselves in the room and that spirit did not stay outside the church doors.
The Corinthians had spiritual gifts, they had knowledge, they had strong personalities, they had people speaking in tongues, people prophesying, people arguing about teachers, people dragging each other into court, people tolerating sexual immorality and people humiliating the poor at the Lord’s supper. Consider the meal, a wealthy believer arrives early with food and drink, someone poor comes later, maybe after work and finds that others have already eaten, in the same room, one person is full and another is ashamed, the table that should proclaim one body in Christ has become another place where status wins.
Then the same church wants to argue about whose gift is more impressive, one believer hears a tongue and treats it like a badge, another has knowledge and uses it like a weapon, another claims loyalty to Paul, another to Apollos, another to Cephas, everybody has a name, a gift, a group, a reason to feel superior, they were not lacking visible spiritual activity, they were lacking love. So, in the middle of correcting their misuse of spiritual gifts, Paul writes one of the most famous passages in the Bible, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal, that line can be beautiful at a wedding, but Paul did not first write it for a wedding, he wrote it to a divided church that had turned spiritual things into status symbols.
The Corinthians had spiritual gifts, they had knowledge, they had strong personalities, they had people speaking in tongues, people prophesying, people arguing about teachers, people dragging each other into court, people tolerating sexual immorality and people humiliating the poor at the Lord’s supper. Consider the meal, a wealthy believer arrives early with food and drink, someone poor comes later, maybe after work and finds that others have already eaten, in the same room, one person is full and another is ashamed, the table that should proclaim one body in Christ has become another place where status wins.
Then the same church wants to argue about whose gift is more impressive, one believer hears a tongue and treats it like a badge, another has knowledge and uses it like a weapon, another claims loyalty to Paul, another to Apollos, another to Cephas, everybody has a name, a gift, a group, a reason to feel superior, they were not lacking visible spiritual activity, they were lacking love. So, in the middle of correcting their misuse of spiritual gifts, Paul writes one of the most famous passages in the Bible, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal, that line can be beautiful at a wedding, but Paul did not first write it for a wedding, he wrote it to a divided church that had turned spiritual things into status symbols.
