November 30 - 1 Corinthians 5-8: Free of Complications

I'm trying to imagine how I would respond to a friend who would send a letter like Paul's letter, specifically calling me out on what I would consider private details of my life - sex, food, my body.  I'm confident that I would first be defensive and justifying.  It would be difficult to see the love behind the intrusions and corrections.  I would judge whether this person was really any more mature than me and if I felt they had the right to speak into my life like this.  My first, second and third responses would surely be "flip and callous arrogance" (5:6) not "obeying God's call, following his commands" (7:19).  Could I instead receive these words as a call from God to a new way to live?

"...Paul continued to tell My story of love to quarrelsome, arrogant, and selfish people.  He knew they were still living according to the saying that Corinthians love to repeat:  'All things are lawful for me' (6:12; 10:23).  Four times Paul mentioned that phrase in this letter.  Although my people in Corinth were living more like Corinthians than Christians, Paul continued to call them to a new way to live.  He never gave up on them.  Neither did I.  I never give up on My children."  (66LL)

God wasn't speaking so plainly and directly through Paul because He was done with the Corinthians' disobedience and selfishness.  He was calling them to free themselves of the complications they were creating in their lives.  Complications that pulled their focus away from Him - the same ones that pull my focus away from Him.  Hear God's call to turn away from specific distractions and turn to His plan for our spiritual formation:

Your flip and callous arrogance in these things bothers me.  You pass it off as a small thing, but it's anything but that...  Our true identity is flat and plain, not puffed up with the wrong kind of ingredient.  The Messiah, our Passover Lamb, has already been sacrificed for the Passover meal, and we are the Unraised Bread part of the Feast.  So let's live out our part in the Feast, not as raised bread swollen with the yeast of evil, but as flat bread - simple, genuine, unpretentious. (5:6-8)

Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean that it's spiritually appropriate.  If I went around doing whatever I thought I could get by with, I'd be a slave to my whims... The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you.  God owns the whole works.  So let people see God in and through your body.   (6:12, 20)

And don't be wishing you were someplace else or with someone else.  Where are you right now is God's place for you.  Live and obey and love and believe right there.  (7:17)

I do want to point out, friends, that time is of the essence.  There is no time to waste, so don't complicate your lives unnecessarily.  Keep it simple - in marriage, grief, joy, whatever.  Even in ordinary things - your daily routines of shopping, and so on.  Deal as sparingly as possible with the things the world thrust on you.... I want you to live as free of complications as possible... All I want is for you to be able to develop a way of life in which you can spend plenty of time together with the Master without a lot of distractions.  (7:29-35)

We sometimes tends to think we know all we need to know to answer these kinds of questions - but sometimes our humble hearts can help us more than our proud minds.  We never really know enough until we recognize that God alone knows it all.  (8:2-3)

Boiling it all down, my friend, God, has written this letter calling me to uncomplicate my life.  Not for the sake of simple living, but for the sake of living in Him.  He's calling me to untangle some of the details of my life that choke out time for Him and sensitivity to His Spirit.