1 Corinthians 9:24-10:13 - The Fight Against the Body and a Sobering Warning Against Treating Union with Christ Like a Joke

  In 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Paul uses the analogy of an athlete competing in a stadium for a laurel wreath. He says in verse 25, "And every person competing controls himself with everything," and what is really interesting is in verse 27, he's very specific about what he's competing against when he says, "but I give my body a black eye and lead it a slave..." As he writes about in his letters to the Romans and to the Galatians, his own body, neurology, and biology is what has to be brought into submission to Christ, and Paul is clear  that this is an ongoing competition which he's determined to win and is determined that the Corinthians understand the need to up their game if they're going to win it too. 

"Everyone runs, but only one gets the prize." There are only two competitors in this competition, your own body's psychology and drives, and Christ within you, and you must train and fight to keep your own body's psychology disengaged and enslaved to Christ's. It is like the Native American parable of the two wolves fighting within the man, the one who wins is the one he feeds.

In the next passage in 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, Paul is kind of not so subtly explicit in his warning to the Corinthians about their behavior and the temptations they were facing. First, he identifies the ancient Israelites using them as a type for Christians, using the not so subtle imagery of the Israelites engaging in types of the Sacraments of Baptism (being baptized into Moses with the cloud and the sea) and Holy Eucharist (spiritual food and spiritual drink). Then he warns the Corinthians not to engage in things like idolatry, whoring, tempting Christ, grumbling, and so on just like they did and faced disastrous consequences from God (twenty three thousand fell, they were destroyed by snakes, they were destroyed by the one who makes women shriek from the loss of their men and children).

Notice that this passage is immediately after Paul talking about competing like an athlete against his own body so he wouldn't be found unproven or disqualified. After saying these things about competing against his body, this is then a further explanation of his reasoning, and he is essentially saying be careful not to treat your union with Christ unseriously or callously like the ancient Israelites treated Yahweh and everything they had been inducted into with contempt. Disastrous consequences will follow. It is the same thing he said in Romans where he said that if God did not spare the natural branches, he may not spare you being a grafted branch either.

A Christian treating Jesus Christ with contempt, treating Him like a joke, knowing who He is, what He's done, and knowing his or her union with Him is blaspheming the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit within them. It is the same as the man at the wedding feast who wasn't wearing the wedding clothes, and will evoke the same response from God. It is the same warning as Hebrews 10:26-31, "It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the Living God."

Paul tells the Corinthians, "A temptation hasn't gotten you except what is human; and God is trustworthy who won't let you be tempted beyond what you're capable of but will make together with the temptation also the way out with being able to bear up under it."

That way out is always submission to Christ within you, and asking and trusting Him to act and speak through you just as He asked and trusted the Father to act and speak through Him. All the temptations which we face are things which trigger the malfunctioning human survival responses of fear, aggression, feeding, and sexual drive to react to things to which we are attached or things to which we are averse. Every human being descended from Adam experiences these responses regardless of what triggers them and God has already made the way out through joining you with Jesus Christ through Baptism into His death, burial, and resurrection. Ask Him, remain in Him, and turn over all control to Him and trust Him in that moment, every moment.

Marriage, Celibacy, and What's the Best Christian Practice - 1 Corinthians 7

 1 Corinthians 7 is one of those passages from Paul’s writings that is frequently misquoted and taken out of context to support things which its author never intended. People have referred to this passage and to others to declare Paul a misogynist. The truth however is that misogyny was the farthest thing from his mind. In Paul’s mind, there was neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, not even male or female, but all the baptized were one thing in Christ Jesus.

The context here is Christian practice and devotion, and Paul answering questions the Corinthian Christians had about what was the best devotion to Christ in terms of marriage or celibacy. In the first seven verses, Paul is essentially laying down the rule of a religious community for those members who choose to marry. The overarching rule is Jesus' "love one another as I have loved you." Thus, marriage becomes a practice of religious devotion to Christ as each party in the marriage practices loving the other person as Christ loved them, surrendering themselves to them, sacrificing themselves for them, and putting the other person's needs above their own. The focus is still Jesus Christ as the only exception Paul gives to this is "leisure time in prayer" before returning to the same practice. Notice also that this is not given as a command but as an allowance, that is, a special dispensation from what Paul considers should be the normal mode of operation which is in Paul's mind (as Paul began this paragraph, "it is beautiful [lit. the best good] for a human being to not be grasped [lit. fastened to, grasped, touched, affected] by a woman") total chastity, as he will later explain, in order to focus specifically on Christ and what God wants. This falls in line with the rest of Paul's teaching on Christian religious practice in that every action, word, and thought are to be in submission to Christ with whom we have been joined through baptism into His death, burial, and resurrection. Paul believed that marriage could be a distraction from this, and so the guidelines he laid down were to bring the marriage practice into line as a devotion to Christ and with Christ as the focus rather than anything else.

In order to understand what Paul's talking about in verses 8 through 16, you have to take the entire context of what he is saying into account here. As I have previously written, the preferred norm for Christian practice, as Paul understood it, was unmarried chastity in order to focus on submission to Christ with whom we have been joined just as He submitted to the Father. Paul saw marriage as a distraction to this, but recognized that not everyone had the internal control for total celibacy. As a result, he laid down some guidelines in the previous verses for married couples in order to transform their marital relationship into a devotion to Christ by focusing on each partner loving the other person and surrendering all authority over their own bodies to the other person as Christ taught. The best way to think of these instructions is as guidelines for a religious community specifically. Think along the lines of the religious rule of the Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, etc. and you'll be on the right track.

In these verses, he is is laying down guidelines with this preferred norm of practice in mind. "Yes, it's better to stay unmarried, but if you don't have the self control, there's no wrong in getting married. I wouldn't recommend it myself, but there's nothing necessarily wrong with it and its better to get married than to burn up inside." And then he turns to address a question which we in this day in age simply don't understand. "Should I leave my husband/wife in order to devote myself to Christ?"

In the writings of the early church, there are accounts of married couples choosing by agreement to remain chaste or celibate in order to devote themselves to Christ. Essentially, the question was whether or not it was okay for a woman to leave her husband to become the equivalent of a nun, or a man his wife to become the equivalent of a monk (these formal designations would not come into play for hundreds of years, but the practice of voluntary religious chastity was firmly in place by the time of Paul).

To this question Paul responded, "No, it's not okay. That's not loving your spouse like Christ loved the Church, or surrendering all authority over your body to them as Christ did to us. If anyone does or has left their spouses to devote themselves to Christ, then they either need to remain celibate (no using it as an excuse to marry someone else), or they need to return to their spouses. It's okay if you have an unbelieving spouse if they want to take off, it's not our place to judge the unbelieving, but it's not okay to leave them. "

I bring this up, because this passage has been grossly misunderstood within the context of our own twisted and distorted "Christian" practice rather than the context of the first century and the churches planted by the man who wrote the letter. Paul was not saying a Christian woman should not escape and seek refuge from an abusive husband. Paul would never have considered the abusive husband a part of the church based on his behavior. Paul was not saying one spouse should trap themselves in a marriage with a raging alcoholic, or someone who would place them in danger. This kind of a person Paul would classify as "the unbelieving" regardless of whether they showed up to church on Sunday because they were clearly under the control of their own malfunctioning neurology and not under the control of Christ. This passage should never be used out of the context in which it was written, and Paul would be horrified to know Christians have historically used his words to keep women subjugated and in dangerous, abusive marriages.

The truth is that none of 1 Corinthians 7 will make a lot of sense in context until you accept that the question being addressed was whether or not it was better to be married or celibate to follow Christ, and whether or not it was better to remain with your spouse or to let them go to remain celibate as a devotion to Christ. This is true also in the last set of verses dealing with whether or not a man who has a contractual betrothal should go ahead with the wedding or keep his fiancee a virgin. Paul’s stance was that if the man thought he was breaking protocol by not marrying her then he wasn’t “sinning” or making a mistake by going ahead with the wedding. But if the man’s conscience was clear and he could restrain himself, then unwedded celibacy, in Paul’s opinion, would be better. Neither was wrong.

The question of celibacy as a devotional practice in the early church is a controversial one among Protestants, and especially Independent or Evangelical Bible Christians because of its continued practice within the Roman Catholic, and to some extant, Eastern Orthodox Churches, with which those aforementioned theologies are still at odds. The idea of celibate nuns and monks is derided and even seen as evil or deviant within some circles, and enforced celibacy is frequently blamed by them as the causes of those cases of pedophilia and sexual abuse which have been uncovered. The fact of the matter is that, in the writings of the early church, celibacy was both common and normal among the baptized. Paul himself was the primary example and obvious champion of the celibate life. 

The key to understanding this passage and Paul's understanding of the subject is that it was voluntary at all times. Paul thought it was the best route to go, but understood, like Jesus, that not everyone could handle it. So, his determination was that those who married did well and it wasn't a screw-up, and those that could handle celibacy did even better and it still wasn't a screw-up. The key here was whether or not one or the other would interfere with or distract from the individual's submission to Jesus Christ with whom he or she had been joined. Being married can be a distraction from Jesus Christ as you have to focus on submitting to the other person as much as you have to submit to Christ. On the other hand, not being married might lead, especially for men, to not being able to bring their sex drive under control and thus whoring. So, what Paul was saying was that it depended on the person in question, and what they could and couldn't handle. No oaths, no vows of celibacy, just whether or not you could handle it and then it became between you, God, and the person to whom you were engaged if you had one. Paul gave the instructions about not leaving your wife or husband within this context. Essentially, he said that, if you are already married, don't leave your wife or husband to become celibate, and if you already had, to either remain celibate or return to your lawful spouse.

Because of two thousand years of cultural religious distortion, it is nearly impossible to understand this passage within the frameworks of our current Christian religious traditions. As always in Paul's writings, the foundation to understand this practice is that of letting go of everything which distracts from or impedes the disengagement from our own biologically and environmentally driven psychology and submission to the psychology of Christ with whom the Christian has been joined through baptism into His death, burial, and resurrection. For some, that means marriage, and for others, that means celibacy. Neither is right for everyone, and, as with all other topics concerning devotional practice, Paul recognizes that some things work better for one person than they do for the other. His whole general take on it was, whatever you need to do to cling to Christ and disengage from yourself, do it. Whether it's marriage or celibacy, circumcision or foreskin, celebrating holy days or treating every day alike. None of it actually matters in substance except whether or not it frees you to submit to Jesus Christ further and this is the goal which drove him, drove every Christian in the early church, and which should drive us today.

The Path of Jesus Christ

     Believing the Path of Jesus Christ to be a casual religion or simple creed is to misunderstand and misrepresent everything Jesus Christ and His Apostles taught.

     It is not a matter of believing or doing this or that in order to get into heaven. Jesus Christ has already atoned for the sins of the entire world. Justification is already dealt with whether you are aware of it or not. Simply do not knowingly reject Him. The work of Jesus Christ on the cross makes the Path of Jesus Christ possible for us to follow.

     The Path of Jesus Christ is not about deliverance from the consequences of our errors and malfunctions. This is neither focus nor the goal of this aspect of our salvation. This was already dealt with and is a given. The Path of Jesus Christ is about deliverance in this life, in these physical, biological bodies from our hereditary, human neurological malfunction with which we are all born and which influences and impacts every action, word, and thought we have.

     The Path of Jesus Christ absolutely requires obedience and submission to Jesus Christ. Deliverance from the malfunction itself, rather than its consequences, in this life means doing what He said in the same way deliverance from any illness requires doing what is prescribed by the attending physician. Deliverance from one's own malfunction means disowning yourself, as Jesus did, and submitting to Jesus Christ with whom you have been joined through baptism into His death and resurrection, just as Jesus Himself submitted to the Father in such a way to where He said nothing and did nothing which the Father did not say or do through Him. It means imitating Christ by submitting to Him as He submitted to the Father with whom He is joined. It means learning to recognize when it is your own neurology or psyche in control of your words, thoughts, or actions, when it is that of Jesus Christ, and learning to shut down your own in favor of Christ's.

     The Path of Jesus Christ requires removal from your life any attachments which impede or get in the way of submission to Christ with whom you have been joined. He said as much including family relationships, possessions, property, ideas, and even your own psyche if it got in the way in the list of things His disciples were required to let go of in order to follow Him. Anything which might trigger a reversion to one's self was to be cut out and thrown away. 

     The Path of Jesus Christ is characterized by lovingkindness, compassion, mercy, courtesy, caring for others, and self-sacrifical love for everyone regardless of their relationship to you. It is fundamentally non-judgmental and without a morality imposed on those who have not dedicated themselves to it. For those who have dedicated themselves to it, the focus and goal is the expression of Jesus Christ to all others and those who have dedicated themselves to it are expected to hold one another accountable and help them to return to the path by every means available if they slip into their own neurology and psyche as opposed to Christ's. The Path of Jesus Christ is a commitment one makes at Baptism and is not to be taken lightly.

     The Path of Jesus Christ demands a response. It is all consuming. It impacts everything you are or believe yourself to be. Once you commit yourself to Him at baptism, there is no turning back to ignorance. You either enslave yourself to Him or you enslave yourself unnecessarily to your own biology. If you enslave yourself to Him, you grow closer to Him and joining between you and Him becomes stronger as He is seen and heard more and more through you. If you enslave yourself to your own biology, the joining grows weaker and your own neurology, your own malfunctioning fear, aggression, feeding and sexual responses, as well as likes and dislikes grow stronger and it becomes as though you never knew Him and at what point does it become a knowing rejection or disowning of Him? Do you notice it? Do you care? Treating that joining with Him with contempt is without forgiveness by the Father.

     The Path of Jesus Christ is not a casual, fashionable religious belief. It is not a series of creeds or statements of belief. It is nothing short of a progression of total surrender to Jesus Christ within you.

A Ramble About Ignorance of the Gospel and Why we are to Preach It Anyway

      Here is a thought that I am exploring, or rather toying with. According to traditional Christianity and a traditional interpretation of Scripture, a person must explicitly believe in Jesus Christ in some way in order to benefit from His atonement and work on the cross. Doesn't this make ignorance of Christ then as unforgivable as explicit rejection of Christ?

     Thing is, in every incident in Scripture where someone did something out of ignorance rather than knowledge, God is far more lenient towards the ignorant. Abimelech is one example in Genesis 20, where he had taken Sarah not knowing she was Abraham's wife. Paul is a great example of this. He actively rejected Jesus as Messiah and hunted Christians with the intention of killing them, and yet, by his own writing, he was shown mercy because he did it in ignorance. He didn't actually know or recognize Him the way the other Pharisees had done (causing their guilt). If God would show Paul this kind of mercy because he acted in ignorance, why wouldn't He give everyone else that kind of chance? Even Jesus mentions that if the Pharisees had actually been blind to what what happening, they wouldn't have been liable, but because they could see it they were guilty of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.

     The older I get and the more I study the Scriptures, the more I'm coming to believe that ignorance of Christ or an imperfect but positive understanding of Him is forgivable as Jesus Himself said that every error and blasphemy will be forgiven to human beings except one, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit which is speaking evil of the testimony the Holy Spirit gives about Jesus Christ (He also says those who don't forgive won't be forgiven and the parables He tells on the subject throw the unforgiving person into the outer darkness; thus there are only two conditions for damnation). This is something the Pharisees and High Priests did knowingly, by their own admission (John 3, Nicodemus, a Pharisee, says flat out that they knew He had been sent by God; they chose to work against Him anyway).

     So then, why should we preach the Gospel at all? 

     First, because Jesus told us to, "Going into all the world, preach the Gospel to every created thing." Second, because in order to make disciples of Jesus, which He also told us to do, "Going into all the world, disciple the nations of people...," you have to explain the Gospel and what He taught. Third, because regardless of what happens in the afterlife, the only way to be delivered in the here and now from your own malfunctioning nature is through clinging to Jesus Christ, remaining in Him, and imitating Him. In other words, you have to become His disciple and practice what He preached. 

     Everything a human being does, says, and thinks apart from Christ doing it through you is influenced by that malfunctioning nature because it is ingrained into our neurology. The only way to be delivered from it here and now is either to physically die, or to render it inert by having Christ bypass it entirely. Jesus Christ, in His total submission to the Father in what He said and did, demonstrated that we don't have to be subject to our own neuro-psychology and its inherent malfunctions in this life if we imitate and follow Him in this by submitting to Him within us. In my reading, this is what I've come to understand is the majority of what Jesus and especially Paul are talking about. Not necessarily what happens in the afterlife, but what happens in the here and now in this life and being delivered from one's own "sin" (the aforementioned human neurological malfunction) in this life. 

     That there are more than two modes or functions of our salvation through Christ, the afterlife and the here and now, is pretty clear in Scripture. That God is not willing that any should be destroyed but that all should come to salvation is stated directly. That Christ died not only for our sins but also for those of the whole world is also stated directly. That His command was not to make believers but disciples was also stated directly. That every sin would be forgiven save one is stated directly. Every statement Scripture makes on the subject of salvation either describes a free and universal atonement for everyone, or it describes a total and unqualified surrender and submission to Jesus Christ within us as He totally submitted and surrendered to the Father within Him. And Jesus also made clear that while there are only a very few conditions that will land someone in the outer darkness, those conditions do exist and ignorance of Him is not one of them.

     Jesus Christ already secured the afterlife for everyone regardless of if they're aware of it, but won't force those who explicitly reject Him into union with Him. If they want the outer darkness, they will get the outer darkness. This is His Good News. His further Good News is that we don't have to be subject to our own "sin" in this life, and He is the way to do it. This is why we practice what He preached as His disciples, and preach His Gospel to the rest of the world.

     The idea that those who are ignorant of Christ, or have not explicitly followed Christian theology, would be justified by Him will run counter to what is normally taught in churches, and will likely be seen by many as heretical. I can't help that. Jesus Christ is the only way to the Father. That much is certain. Whether or not a person has to be aware of this to end up in His presence and benefit from His atonement after physical death is one thing; that a person must be aware of the Gospel and follow Christ to be delivered from his or her own malfunctioning behavior in this life is quite another.