PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The First Epistle to the Corinthians
Dods, Marcus · 110,900 words · 154 reading sections
_Spiritual Gifts And Public Worship._
Again, we here see that worship in which the understanding bears no part receives no countenance from Paul. "I will pray with the spirit; I will pray with the understanding also." Where the prayers of the Church are in an unknown tongue, such as Latin, the worshipper may indeed pray with the spirit, and may be edified …
864 wordsSECTION 122_Spiritual Gifts And Public Worship._
We cannot but ask in passing, What has become of all those inspired utterances with which the Corinthian Church from week to week resounded? Doubtless they entered into the life of that generation and fostered the Christian character which so often shone out on the heathen world with surprising purity. Doubtless, too, …
655 wordsSECTION 123_Spiritual Gifts And Public Worship._
It might be difficult to say whether the somewhat selfish ambition of those Corinthians to secure the surprising gifts of the Spirit or our own torpid indifference and lack of expectation is less to be commended. Certainly every one who attaches himself to Christ ought to indulge in great expectations. Through Christ l…
394 wordsSECTION 124_The Resurrection Of Christ._
"Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Chr…
352 wordsSECTION 125I. Its Place In The Christian Creed.
Paul having now settled the minor questions of order in public worship, marriage, intercourse with the heathen, and the other various difficulties which were distracting the Corinthian Church, turns at last to a matter of prime importance and perennial interest: the resurrection of the body. This great subject he handl…
769 wordsSECTION 126I. Its Place In The Christian Creed.
Secondly, we must understand the position occupied by those whom Paul addressed in this chapter. They doubted the Resurrection; but in that day, as in our own, the Resurrection was denied from two opposite points of view. Materialists, such as the Sadducees, believing that mental and spiritual life are only manifestati…
776 wordsSECTION 127I. Its Place In The Christian Creed.
This view, although erroneous, can do little harm to experimental or practical Christianity. The difference between a disembodied spirit and a spiritual body is really unappreciable to our present knowledge. And if any one finds it impossible to believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ, but easy to believe in His p…
650 wordsSECTION 128I. Its Place In The Christian Creed.
'Below the surface stream, shallow and light, Of what we _say_ we feel--below the stream, As light, of what we _think_ we feel, there flows With noiseless current strong, obscure and deep, The central stream of what we feel indeed;' and by this alone are we truly characterised." This, however, is not to interpret …
760 wordsSECTION 129I. Its Place In The Christian Creed.
It was the resurrection of our Lord, then, which convinced His disciples that His words had been true, that He was what He had claimed to be, and that He was not mistaken regarding His own person, His work, His relation to the Father, the prospects of Himself and His people. This was the answer given by God to the doub…
874 wordsSECTION 130I. Its Place In The Christian Creed.
3. For, lastly, it is in the resurrection of Christ we see at once the norm or type of our life here and of our destiny hereafter. Holiness and immortality are two aspects, two manifestations, of the Divine life we receive from Christ. They are inseparable the one from the other. His Spirit is the source of both. "If t…
342 wordsSECTION 131Ii. Its Proof.
_THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST (continued)._ Paul, having affirmed that the resurrection of Christ is an essential element of the Gospel, proceeds to sketch the evidence for the fact. That evidence mainly consists in the attestation of those who at various times and in various places and circumstances had seen the Lord a…
743 wordsSECTION 132Ii. Its Proof.
1. The first answer is plainly inadequate. We are asked to account for the Christian Church, for the belief in a risen Lord which animated the first disciples with a faith, a hope, a courage, whose power is felt to this day; we ask for an explanation of this singular circumstance that a number of men arrived at the con…
751 wordsSECTION 133Ii. Its Proof.
Again, one of the most reasonable and influential of our contemporaries ascribes "the great myth of Christ's bodily revival to the belief on the part of the disciples that such a soul could not become extinct. In a lesser way the grave of a beloved friend has been to many a man the birthplace of his faith; and it is ob…
678 wordsSECTION 134Ii. Its Proof.
Is there then no possibility of the disciples having been deceived? May they not have been mistaken? May they not have seen what they wished to see, as other men have sometimes done? Men of vivid fancy or of a boastful spirit sometimes come really to believe they have done and said things they never did or said. Is it …
772 wordsSECTION 135Ii. Its Proof.
3. There remains, therefore, only the third explanation of the disciples' belief in the Resurrection: they did see Him alive after He had been dead and buried. Plainly it was no phantom, or ghost, or imaginary appearance which could personate their lost Master and rouse them from the despondency, and inaction, and timi…
656 wordsSECTION 136Ii. Its Proof.
No one, so far as I know, who has taken a serious interest in the evidence adduced for this event, has denied that it would be quite sufficient to authenticate any ordinary historical event. In point of fact, the majority of the events of past history are accepted on much slenderer evidence than that which we have for …
614 wordsSECTION 137_Consequences Of Denying Resurrection._
"Now if Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses o…
437 wordsSECTION 138_Consequences Of Denying Resurrection._
In endeavouring to restore among the Corinthians the belief in the resurrection of the body, Paul shows the fundamental place occupied in the Christian creed by the resurrection of Christ, and what attestation His resurrection had received. He further exhibits certain consequences which flow from denial of the resurrec…
762 wordsSECTION 139_Consequences Of Denying Resurrection._
2. The second consequence which flows from the denial of the resurrection is, that Paul's own life is a mistake. "Why stand we in jeopardy every hour? What advantageth it me to risk death daily, and to suffer daily, if the dead rise not?" If there is no resurrection, he says, my whole life is a folly. No day passes but…
813 wordsSECTION 140_Consequences Of Denying Resurrection._
It is obvious therefore that this is the conclusion which the mass of mankind draw from a disbelief in immortality. Convince men that this life is all, that death is final extinction, and they will eagerly drain this life of all the pleasure it can yield. We may say that there are some men to whom virtue is the greates…
716 wordsSECTION 141_Consequences Of Denying Resurrection._
3. But the most serious consequence which results if there be no resurrection of the dead, is that in that case Christ is not risen. "If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen." For Paul refused to consider the resurrection of Christ as a miracle in the sense of its being exceptional and aside f…
883 wordsSECTION 142_Consequences Of Denying Resurrection._
Paul is carried on from the thought of the resurrection of "them that are Christ's," to the thought of the consummation of all things which this great event introduces and signalizes. This exhibition of the triumph over death is the signal that all other enemies are now defeated. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed…
668 wordsSECTION 143_The Spiritual Body._
"But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: but God giveth it a body as it …
503 wordsSECTION 144_The Spiritual Body._
The proofs of the Resurrection which Paul has adduced are satisfactory. So long as they are clearly before the mind, we find it possible to believe in that great experience which will finally give us possession of the life to come. But after all proof rises doubt irrepressible, owing to the difficulty of understanding …
875 wordsSECTION 145_The Spiritual Body._
Paul does not attempt to describe the future body, but contents himself with pointing out one or two of its characteristics by which it is distinguished from the body we now wear. "It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raise…
737 wordsSECTION 146_The Spiritual Body._
The spiritual body, which is reserved for spiritual men, is a body in which the upholding life is spiritual. The natural life of man both forms to a human shape and upholds the natural body; the spiritual body is similarly maintained by what is spiritual in man. It is the soul, or natural life, of man which gives the b…
858 wordsSECTION 147_The Spiritual Body._
On the other hand, if we consider instances in which the spiritual life has been resolutely and unreservedly chosen, we see anticipations here also of the future destiny of those who have so chosen. They may be crushed by diseases as painful and as fatal as the most flagrant of sinners endure, but these diseases freque…
860 wordsSECTION 148_The Spiritual Body._
It is then with joy and triumph Paul contemplates death. Naturally we shrink from and fear it. We know it only from one side: only from seeing it in the persons of other men, and not from our own experience. And what we see in others is necessarily only the darker side of death, the cessation of bodily life and of all …
719 wordsSECTION 149_The Poor._
This is the permanent incentive of the Christian life. This present experience of ours leads to a larger, more satisfying experience. Beyond our horizon there awaits us an endlessly enlarging world. Death, which seems to bound our view, is really but our real birth to a fuller, and eternal, and true life. "Therefore be…
628 wordsSECTION 150_The Poor._
In closing his letter to the Corinthians, Paul, as usual, explains his own movements, and adds a number of miscellaneous directions and salutations. These for the most part relate to matters of merely temporary interest, and call for no comment. Interest of a more permanent kind unfortunately attaches to the collection…
919 wordsSECTION 151_The Poor._
That a change is desirable no one who has spent two thoughts on the subject can doubt. The only question is, What change is desirable and possible? Is there any organization or social system which could check the evils resulting from the present competitive system, and secure that every one who is willing to work shoul…
695 wordsSECTION 152_The Poor._
Appeal is confidently made to the mind of Christ by both parties, both by those who trust to the enforcement of a socialistic scheme, and by those who believe only in the social improvement which results from the improvement of the individual. By the one party it is confidently affirmed that were Jesus Christ now on ea…
892 wordsSECTION 153_The Poor._
The method of collecting which Paul recommends was in all probability that which he himself practised. "Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come." This verse has sometimes been quoted as evidence that the Christians met f…
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178 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.