1 Coríntios 1
Tony Garland · Citado em PreceptAustin
1 Coríntios 1
Garland adds "The gifts come from God for the upbuilding of the community. They can take no credit for them, and their gifts do not lift them above others. All Christians are gifted, and no one gift makes one greater than another." (First Corinthians) Lowell
1 Coríntios 1
Garland quips "He did not put notches in his Bible to keep a head count of those he had baptized." (BECNT-1 Cor) S Lewis
1 Coríntios 1
Garland - BECNT-1Cor) The cross of Christ will always be an offence to the natural man. -- John Blanchard Perishing as noted above is in the present tense picturing the foolish unbelievers as continually perishing or already in the process of perishing, “on the road to perdition”. The NLT has a vivid paraphrase "those who are headed for destruction!" An unbeliever has no idea that every tick of the clock is moving him/her closer to eternal torment and separation from the glory of the Creator (cf 2 Th 1:8-9+)! The present tense of perishing recalls Ro 1:18+ where Paul wrote that "the wrath of God is (present tense - in process of being [divine passive]) revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." The use of the present tense also conveys the certainty of their future dread destiny. We see a similar contrast between perishing and being saved in Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians... But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. 15 For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved (sozo in present tense and passive voice = divine passive = work of the Spirit) and among those who are perishing (apollumi in present tense = they are already perishing even while still alive! A horrible, tragic thought!); 16 to the one an aroma from death to death (ED: LITTLE WONDER THEY ARE ANTAGONISTIC WHEN YOU GIVE OFF THE "FRAGRANCE OF CHRIST" IN THEIR PRESENCE! DON'T BE SURPRISED!), to the other an aroma from life to life. And who is adequate for these things? (INDEED - NONE OF US! FOR PAUL'S ANSWER SEE 2 Cor 3:5-6+) (2 Cor 2:14-16; see also comments on 2 Th 2:10 which contrasts those who perish and those saved) Play the great Fanny Crosby hymn Rescue the Perishing (and then go out and proclaim Jesus Christ and Him crucified to the lost in your sphere of influence.) Alan Redpath says perishing "means entire failure to be what God intends a man to be: the disease of sin running its course unchecked. It indicates an increasing distance from God, a gradual sinking into depravity, a withdrawal of the only source of real happiness and power. It is the drift downward in spite of all the efforts made to pull oneself up....Each one of us is in one or the other of these categories: either we are being delivered from the disease of self and sin, or we are becoming more sinful and more selfish and more depraved in spite of all our self-effort. But notice, in the second place, that both “being saved,” and “perishing” describe a continuing process. Life is pictured for us here as something that is moving and active. In the New Testament we have the great idea of salvation considered from at least three different points of view. Sometimes it is spoken of as having been accomplished in the past, “Ye have been saved.” That describes the initial act of faith in the blood of Jesus Christ as Savior. Again it is spoken of as in the present, “Ye are being saved,” as in verse 18. Sometimes it is relegated to the future, “Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Romans 13:11). But there are many passages which describe salvation as a continuous experience, running through life, such as “By one offering he hath perfected forever them that are [being] sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). One thing that will characterize the life of every genuine believer in the Lord Jesus, truly born of the Spirit of God, is growth, development. He will not talk about having arrived; he does not say he has had a tremendous second experience of sanctification; he would not boast in his holiness, nor exalt his own experience, but there are evidences of his growth in his behavior. As he is more and more filled with the Spirit, he grows more gracious, more gentle, more Christlike, and as we stand back and watch his life, we see God working a miracle. As the clay in the hand of the potter, so the man’s life is being molded, shaped, and conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus. May I say kindly, yet firmly, that unfortunately many professing Christians show no evidence of such growth at all. In fact, do I exaggerate if I dare to say that it is the majority of them? They may have been saved, perhaps, for twenty years, but they are still as mean, hot-tempered, selfish, jealous, unkind, impure, and worldly as ever. There are no marks of maturity, no evidences of becoming more like the Lord Jesus. The moment we accept forgiveness through the blood of the Lord Jesus we are obligated by bearing His name to stand for righteousness, purity, and holiness. Our business in life is to seek to win somebody else for Jesus; the redemptive ministry of the love of God should be expressed through our lives in service to others. That is the mark of the real thing. How desperately we all need power to stand for the right, power to speak for the Lord Jesus, power to live for Him day by day. Just as “being saved” is a constant process, so is “perishing.” It is becoming more and more interested in worldly things, accepting defeat and compromise without blushing. How many who have professed to be Christians for a long time find it so much easier now to submit to things that are selfish, mean, and worldly! Paul describes salvation as a process that is going on constantly. Therefore, it is not only registering a decision for Jesus that evidences your destiny; it is the direction of your character. Perhaps that decision has even brought you into Christian training or some form of ministry, but if it is not accompanied by direction of character, there is room to question whether or not it is authentic. The Bible tells you to examine yourself, whether you be in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5+). May the Holy Spirit challenge your heart with this New Testament description of real salvation! What has been the trend of your character in the past twelve months? Your body comes to church, maybe to teach a Sunday school class. You listen to sermon after sermon, but deep down in your own soul, is there progress into the Lord or regress into sin? Do you have increased hunger for truth, for holiness, for righteousness, for the Lord Himself? Or is there carelessness and worldliness and superficiality, an easy slipping into habits that you never dreamed you would allow a year ago? We make constant progress along one road or the other, but what is the determining factor? What guides our direction and governs our destiny? It is the “preaching of the cross.” Now let us be careful that we understand what that phrase means. It does not mean the act of preaching, itself. We have here the Greek word logos, the same word that is in the first chapter of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . and the Word was made flesh . . .”(John 1:1, 14). It is “the word of the cross.” " (The Royal Route to Heaven: Studies in First Corinthians) Zodhiates on perishing...being saved - As perishing is a progressive state, so is salvation. Paul speaks of the perishing ones and of those who are being saved. These are states of heart which increase by the very fact of continuance. Neither perishing nor being saved are static states. To put it simply, the longer you are saved, the more saved you are; and the longer you are lost, the more lost you are. (1 Cor Commentary) Henry Morris rightly observes that "Those who regard Christianity as foolishness, rejecting and perhaps even ridiculing God's Word, thereby prove to others that they are perishing in sin, on their way to hell." (Defender's Study Bible). Cross (4716)(stauros from histemi = to stand) was an an upright stake, especially a pointed one. Thayer adds the stauros was a well-known instrument of most cruel and ignominious punishment, borrowed by the Greeks and Romans from the Phoenicians; to it were affixed among the Romans, down to the time of Constantine the Great, the guiltiest criminals, particularly the basest slaves, robbers, the authors and abetters of insurrections, and occasionally in the provinces, at the arbitrary pleasure of the governors, upright and peaceable men also, and even Roman citizens themselves. Stauros is used in 1 Cor 1:17-18 figuratively to describe the Cross as a symbol which stands for the death of Christ as an atonement for sins. Stedman gives background on the Cross - It was, for these early Christians, and for those among whom they lived, a horrible symbol. If you had used it then as a symbol it would have made people shudder. We would get much closer to it today if we substituted a symbol of an electric chair for the cross. Suppose we had an electric chair mounted on our wall here, with its straps and its atmosphere of death and of shame? Wouldn't it be strange driving across this country to see church steeples with electric chairs on top? We would get much closer to the meaning that the cross had in the minds of 1st century people if that were true. Now, the cross is not the whole of the gospel. Some people have misunderstood that from this letter, because Paul said that when he came to Corinth he came determined not to preach anything among them "save Jesus Christ and him crucified." Before this letter is over, however, the apostle is going to write a great section on the resurrection of Christ. That is part of it too. But the cross was particularly needed in Corinth, as it is needed in our American churches, because the word of the cross is the cure for all human division. (God's Nonsense) D A Carson - “What would you think if a woman came to work wearing earrings stamped with an image of the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima? What would you think of a church building adorned with a fresco of the massed graves at Auschwitz?....The same sort of shocking horror was associated with cross and crucifixion in the first century.” McGrath - Corporations spend huge sums of money designing logos. Advertising agencies are hired to conceive a logo which will express the qualities that the corporation wants to be associated with it in the public mind. These are usually qualities such as stability, reliability, progressiveness, or aggressiveness. This design will appear on their letterheads, on their products, and be prominently displayed at their national and local headquarters.…An organization which chose as its logo a hangman’s noose, a firing squad, a gas chamber or an electric chair would accordingly seem to have taken leave of its senses. It would be sheer madness to choose an instrument of execution as a symbol of an organization.…And yet exactly such a symbol is universally recognized as the logo of Christianity. Christians are baptized with the sign of the cross. Churches and other places of meeting do not merely include a cross, they are often built in the shape of a cross. Many Christians make the sign of the cross in times of danger or anxiety. The graves of Christians are marked with crosses. (1 Corinthians )