Table Of Content

; '[he \li u r� d 1�t Life Bihlc mphlicr 1 designed to open the wonder-. ot_ Crc1d ' \ \'onl to \ ou m an 111 1 •lttful and reI C'\ nt \\;J\. . • l t ''1·11 put mc:1111ng .tnd frc hne s b ck into \Q ur qui t bm . J ·11tc Irrhlc \mplr�er i more than . com Bt.;ond m ntan 1'\"f'trt 1·�p/,111at1011 ol each Bihle pa .,age, thrs t of c citing hook ... prc-.cnt-. n spt1111 of ttJd) that be m \\Ith our o\\n pr.I} crful im 1..:.,ligauon of Scripntre. Inc authors commcntan then '",tmplific...," the main themes of etch B1hle booL: ml u gcst� other s�lld) mel hod that \\Ill unlock both its meanmtc d Jnd !h dc\C>tron.11 tre,t "ure . I he Brhle mplrfier \\111 I , . }OU 111 cream cl) appl}1ng <.iod' \\ ord to C\cnda\ hf4 Bu } chun:h memht>r , pa tors, teachers, ml hoth be n ning .tnd 'it:;t-.oncd Bil1le student., \\ 111 find the \hundant l 1fc Bible \rnplificr to lie one of the most \Jiu able u r fr1 n II 'iCtHh tool-. rhc\ \ l' c\C r c m nccl. U ...e it in 'ill;,1ll group home ft·llm\ -.hip.... , personal tud), pr:t) er m ctln�, nd ��-; 1 CORINTHIANS The fc;senti.ilc, and '\onc'i<;Cntials of Chric;tian lh ing \ \ h.H i'i'>llC., .trc 1111port.1111 for the d111rch •nd mill\11lu;il ( hri-.1h111' tod.l): \t first gl.incc the) 111.1) semi !:tr rcmmcd from \\ h.11 the Cor inchi.111 1111.:mlwr-.hip \1,1' u111ccrlll'd nhout t\\O tl1ou,;111d )CM'>. �o-i,suc., lil.:c li.1pt1s111 for the clcad, \ell., But t.th. •l do'icr look. Lct L.urr R1dt,1rd., g111dc) 1111 111) our W. LARRY RICHARDS 1HE ABUNDANT I1FE BIBLE AMPLIFIER The Essentials and Nonessentials of Christian Living Matthew GEORGE R. KNIGHT General Editor Pacific Press® Publishing Association Nampa, Idaho Oshawa, Ontario, Canada CONTENTS General Preface ............................................................................. 1 1 Author's Preface ............................................................................ 1 3 How to Use This Book ................................................................. 1 5 Introduction to the First Letter to the Corinthians ..................... 1 9 List of Works Cited ...................................................................... 3 7 Edited by B. Russell Holt Designed by Tim Larson Part I: The Cross: The Essential of All Essentials (1-4) 1 . God's Wisdom Versus Man's Wisdom (1:1-3 :4) ................... .43 2 . The Apostles Are United! (3:5-4:21) ...................................... 65 Part II: Morality: An Essential (5-7) 3 . Morality Versus Immorality (5, 6) .......................................... 9 1 4. Marriage and Morality (7) ..................................................... 1 1 5 Part ill: Essentials and Nonessentials (8-11) tations is supplied by the author. . 5. Love Is Essential; Knowledge Is Not (8, 9) .......................... 141 6. "Do All to the Glory of God" (10: 1-1 1 : 1 ) ........................... 165 7. Essentials and Nonessentials in Worship (1 1 :2 -34) ............. 181 . living I W Larry Richards. ��=�� II. Series. BS2675.5.R53 2 2 7' .207-<lc2 1 97 98 99 00 01 • 5 4 3 2 I . 97-26770 CIP Part IV: Love: The Guiding Essential for Christian Living (12-14) 8. Spirituality Defined (12, 13) ................................................. 205 9. Evaluation of Gifts and True Spirituality (14) ...................... 228 Part V: Resurrection: Essential Basis of Hope (15, 16) 1 0. Defense of the Resurrection ( 1 5) .......................................... 253 11. Concluding Matters (16) ....................................................... 275 DEDICATION To Dorothy, my favorite conversationalist GENERAL PREFACE The Abundant Life Bible Amplifier series is aimed at helping readers understand the Bible better. Rather than merely offering comments on or about the Bible, each volume seeks to enable people to study their Bibles with fuller understanding. To accomplish that task, scholars who are also proven communicators have been selected to author each volume. The basic idea underlying this combination is that scholarship and the ability to communicate on a popular level are compatible skills. While the Bible Amplifier is written with the needs and abilities of laypeople in mind, it will also prove helpful to pastors and teachers. Beyond individual readers, the series will be useful in church study groups and as guides to enrich participation in the weekly prayer meeting. Rather than focusing on the details of each verse, the Bible Amplifier series seeks to give readers an understanding of the themes and patterns of each biblical book as a whole and how each passage fits into that context. As a result, the series does not seek to solve all the problems or answer all the questions that may be related to a given text. In the process of accomplishing the goal for the series, both inductive and explanatory methodologies are used. Each volume in this series presents its author's understanding of the biblical book being studied. As such, it does not necessarily represent the "official" position of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It should be noted that the Bible Amplifier series utilizes the New International Version of the Bible as its basic text. Every reader should read the "How to Use This Book" section to get the fullest benefitfrom the Bible Amplifier study volumes. Dr. W Larry Richards is professor of New Testament exegesis at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University where he also serves as director of the Greek Manuscript 1 1 12 AlfTllOR'S PREFACE I remember vividly the Bible Marking Class I held as a pastor in my first district in Red Bluff and Corning, California. Toward the end, we set aside an evening to deal with difficult Bible passages. One of the passages we looked at was 1 Corinthians 15 :2'1, in which Paul wrote about baptism on behalf of the dead. In 1965, I had what I thought was a very well developed explanation for the passage, one that made use of my knowledge of the Greek! Even to this day, long after moving to a different explanation, I think it was probably a pretty good answer. Good answers, though, are not necessarily satisfying in themselves. Years later, after a much more careful examination of the Corinthian correspondence, I discovered, to my great joy, that the answers to that passage and all the other difficult ones in First and Second Corinthians were much easier to explain by simply knowing what was going on in Corinth when Paul wrote his letters to the people there. The complex and carefully developed answer I had worked out was not required. What I share with you in this volume, I have taught many times to students and church groups at Pacific Union College, the SDA Theo logical Seminary at Andrews University, the Adventist seminary in Zaokski, Russia, workers' meetings, and church presentations.The great reward that comes to any religion teacher is the response, "I want to go back and study the text again!" It is my prayer that this will be your experience as you read this book. For their part in this volume, I want to thank my wife, Dorothy, and my students at Andrews University. First, Dorothy has repeat edly told me that I should share with the larger church community my understanding of a wide variety of topics.This is a start. First Corinthians offers the opportunity at least to touch on some of these topics. She and I have had many stimulating discussions on a multi- 1 3 14 BIBLE AMPLIFIER-I CORINTHIANS • GETTING STARTED stand. How to Use This Book The Abundant Life Bible Amplifier series treats each major por tion of each Bible book in five main sections. The first section is called "Getting Into the Word." The purpose of this section is to encourage readers to study their own Bibles. For that reason, the text of the Bible has not been printed in the volumes in this series. You will get the most out of your study if you work through the exercises in each of the "Getting Imo the Word" sections. This will not only aid you in learning more about the Bible but will also in crease your skill in using Bible tools and in asking (and answering) meaningful questions about the Bible. It will be helpful if you write out the answers and keep them in a notebook or file folder for each biblical book. Writing out your thoughts will enhance your understanding. The benefit derived from such study, of course, will be proportionate to the amount of effort expended. The "Getting Into the Word" sections assume that the reader has certain minimal tools available. Among these are a concordance and a Bible with maps and marginal cross-references. If you don't have a New International Version of the Bible, we recommend that you obtain one for use with this series, since all the Bible Amplifier authors are using the NIV as their basic text. For the same reason, your best choice of a concordance is the NIV&haustive Concordance, 1 5 1 6 BIBLE AMPLIFIER-I CORINTHIANS • edited by E. W. Goodrick and]. R. Kohlenberger. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible and Young's Analytical Concordance to the Bible are also useful. However, even if all you have is Cruden's Concordance, you will be able to do all of the "Getting Into the Word" . exercises and most of the "Researching the Word" exercises. The "Getting Into the Word" sections also assume that the read�r has a Bible dictionary. The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary is quite helpful, but those interested in greater �epth may w�t to ac quire the four-volume International Standard Bible Encyclopedta (19741988 edition) or the six-volume Anchor Bible Dictionary. The second section in the treatment of the biblical passages is called "Exploring the Word." The purpose of this section is to di�cuss the major themes in each biblical book. Thus the comments �ll typically deal with fairly large portions of Scripture (often an enu�e chapter) rather than providing a verse-by-verse treatment, such as is found in the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary. In fact, many verses and perhaps whole passages in some biblical books may be treated minimally or passed over altogether. Another thing that should be noted is that the purpose of the "Exploring the Word" sections is not to respond to all the problems or answer all the questions that might arise in each passage. Rather, as stated above, the "Exploring the Word" sections are to develop the Bible writers' major themes. In the process, the author of each volume will bring the best of modern scholarship into the discussion and thus enrich the reader's understanding of the biblical passage at hand. The "Exploring the Word" sections will also develop and provide insight into many of the issues first raised in the "Getting Into the Word" exercises. The third section in the treatment of the biblical passage is "Applying the Word." This section is aimed at bringing the le�sons of each passage into daily life. Once again, you may want to wnte out a response to these questions and keep them in your notebook or file folder on the biblical book being studied. The fourth section, "Researching the Word," is for those students who want to delve more deeply into the Bible passage under study or into the history behind it. It is recognized that not everyone will • HOW TO USE THIS BOOK 17 have the research tools for this section. Those expecting to use the research sections should have an exhaustive Bible concordance the ' Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, a good Bible dictionary, and a Bible atlas. It will also be helpful to have several versions of the Bible. The final component in each chapter of this book will be a list of recommendations for "Further Study of the Word." While most readers will not have all of these works, many of them may be available in local libraries. Others can be purchased through your local book dealer. It is assumed that many users of this series will already own the seven-volume Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary and the one-volume Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary. In closing, it should be not:ed that while a reader will learn much about the Bible from a reading of the books in the Bible Amplifier series, he or she will gain infinitely more by stud ying the Bible in connection with that reading. INTRODUCTION First Letter to the Corinthians Get ready for an adventure! The letter Paul wrote to the newly formed Christian church in ancient Corinth touches on an amazing array of topics-topics that unexpectedly stray from the original point, incor porate seemingly unanswerable questions, and at times offer puzzling solutions rarely found in a New Testament book. The letter addresses proper and improper behavior, correct and incorrect theological stances, and even th.! intriguing psychological exchanges that go on between friends and enemies. Talk about variety! It's in this letter! The volatile conditions at Corinth give us tremendous insights to the apostle Paul as a person and to the innermost workings of a community of Christian believers who had more than their share of trouble. But before we go any further, I invite you first to do the following: 1 . Read the entire letter. If you are unable to do so in one sitting, read the letter according to its major sections (see the Outline): chapters 1-4; chapters 5-7; chapters 8-11; chapters12-14; and then the final two, 15and16. Whether you read the letter in one sitting or several, indicate in a notebook what you believe are the major ideas in each sec tion. 2. As you read, make a record of your initial impressions, noting in particular the issues discussed in the letter as well as Paul's method of dealing with them. When is Paul informing the church? When is he counseling? Disputing? 19 20 Later in this BIBLE AMPLIFIER-I CORINTHIANS • Introduction you will find additional study sugges tions. • INTRODUCTION 21 existed-what caused them. But before we discuss the reasons for all that went wrong in Corinth, we want to indicate the method that has been followed in this commentary. Corinth: The Problem Church Approach to the Study The reader is invited to adopt two governing presuppositions used by the author in the writing of both volumes on 1 and 2 Corinthians. 1. The letters are pastoral responses to questions that arose in Corinth in the early 5Os of the first century AD. (see the greeting in I Cor. 1: 1- 3 ). That is, Paul's letters were written to deal with pastoral needs; they were not written as theological essays. While this is true for all Paul� writings, it is particularly true for the Corinthian letters. Theology does indeed exist in the letters. But theology was not the purpose for writing the letters. By approaching Paul's epistles as pastoral letters (in which theology emerges), we will be much more open to the historical setting, which is vital for an accurate understanding of what Paul wrote. us more information! 2. Before we can make an application to our day, we must first know how Paul� words were understood by the original readers-the church at Corinth. The approach used by Ellen White in her book on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount applies equally well for all the Bible books, and we shall readily recognize its value for the Corinthian correspondence: "Let us in imagination go back to that scene, and, as we sit with the living with his stepmother.) disciples on the mountainside, enter into the thoughts andfeelingr that filled their hearts. Understa,nding what the words ofJesus meant to those who heard them, we may discern in them a new �dness and beauro ...,, and 't" A.l ;.r, may also gather for ourselves their deeper lessons" (Though'ts From the Mount ofBlessing, 1, emphasis supplied). In this statement we have two key suggestions and two invaluable results: • • Denial of the resurrection doctrine. Baptism on behalf of the dead. Suggestions 1. Go back to the original scene and enter into the thoughts of the first audience. As we look at all these topics, and others, in the chapters that follow, it will be important for us to understand ·vhy the problems 2. Understand what the words meant to those who received the original counsel.