A Divided Church

1Corinthians 1:10  

"Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 

that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions 

among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together 

in the same mind and in the same judgment." 

    He softens the rebuke which is given, not as from a schoolmaster with a rod, but as from one who has no other emotion than love.  It should have shown them how wrong their  disputes and divisions were. They were brothers and they should have lived in brotherly love. He bids them to make up their differences. He wishes them to be joined together, like joining together bones that have been fractured or joining together a joint that has been dislocated. The disunion is unnatural and must be cured for the sake of the health and efficiency of the body of the Church 
    There were those who claimed to belong to Paul. No doubt this was mainly a Gentile party. Paul had always preached the gospel of Christian freedom and the end of the law. It is most likely that this party were attempting to turn liberty into license and using their new found Christianity as an excuse to do as they liked. They had forgotten that the representation of the good news brought the essentials of the Christian ethic. They had forgotten that they were saved, not to be free to sin, but to be free not to sin.

    It was Paul's claim that he set before men the Cross of Christ in its simplest terms. To decorate the story of the Cross with rhetoric and cleverness would have been to make men think more of the language than of the facts, more of the speaker than of the message. It was Paul's aim to set before men, not himself, but Christ in all his Glory! 

Amen!

Reading: (1Cort:10-17)

Ref: (HG SB, DSB)

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry