1 Corinthians 14:26 - 15:28

Teacher: Rusty Kennedy
Series: 1 Corinthians (Acts)

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Rusty's Notes

ORDER IN CHURCH MEETINGS
1 CORINTHIANS 14
26 What then, brothers and sisters? Whenever you come together, each one has a hymn, a teaching, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Everything is to be done for building up.

• For one verse, Paul reflects again on a representative sampling of the whole range of spiritual gifts.[1]

27 If anyone speaks in a tongue, there are to be only two, or at the most three, each in turn, and let someone interpret. 28 But if there is no interpreter, that person is to keep silent in the church and speak to himself and God.

• But even there, he didn’t rule out the public use of tongues altogether.
• When we get to the end of the chapter he will say, “Do not forbid speaking in tongues.”
• We need to be extraordinarily cautious, therefore, in our contemporary world whenever we hear Christians claiming that this gift or any of the gifts is not for today or should not be practiced or should be practiced but limited to a private context.
• We should also be extraordinarily careful for those who refer to tongues or prophecy or any other gift without reflecting on checks and balances, accountability, mechanisms for controlling and evaluating the alleged presence and use of these gifts.
• So what Paul does in verses 29–36, recognizing that no true gift of the Holy Spirit is ever given in a way that that individual cannot exercise control over it, is to give some criteria for their regulation, for what he will call, at the end of the chapter, “a fitting and orderly [practice].”[2]

29 Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should evaluate. 30 But if something has been revealed to another person sitting there, the first prophet should be silent. 31 For you can all prophesy one by one, so that everyone may learn and everyone may be encouraged. 32 And the prophets’ spirits are subject to the prophets, 33 since God is not a God of disorder but of peace.

• If there is a prophecy in the nature of a future prediction, we need to wait to see if it, in fact, comes true.
• If it is an instruction for people today, is what it is teaching or commending consistent with biblical teaching elsewhere?
• If it’s something that can’t readily be evaluated by these criteria, does it seem to have the intention of edifying or building people up?
• We can never allow the so-called word of a Christian prophet, whether it’s in “ordinary preaching” or a spontaneous utterance to trump what we know God is saying from His Word.
• There has to be discernment.
• There has to be evaluation.[3]
• This was typically done by the elders in the church.

As in all the churches of the saints, 34 the women should be silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but are to submit themselves, as the law also says. 35 If they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home, since it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

• Paul had already permitted the women to pray and prophesy (1 Cor. 11:5), so this instruction must apply to the immediate context of evaluating the prophetic messages.
• It would appear that the major responsibility for doctrinal purity in the early church rested on the shoulders of the men, the elders in particular (1 Tim. 2:11–12).[4]
• It seems much more likely that some combination of a privilege restricted to the elders as the leaders of the church, in conjunction possibly with the intrusive questions, lack of education, need for women to in public be perceived as appropriately submitting to their husbands, is what’s going on.[5]

36 Or did the word of God originate from you, or did it come to you only?

• How am I able to speak to you each week?
• If this is me making these messages up… look out!
• You can be mad at me, but all I am actually doing is reading the Word, studying it in context of all 66 books and teaching what has been revealed to me.
• You have the ability to evaluate what I am teaching as truth.
• But there is no reason to be mad at me.

37 If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, he should recognize that what I write to you is the Lord’s command. 38 If anyone ignores this, he will be ignored. 39 So then, my brothers and sisters, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues.
40 But everything is to be done decently and in order.[6]

• So, he winds up the passage by saying, “Prefer prophecy.
• Seek prophecy.
• Don’t forbid speaking in tongues, but let everything be done decently and in order.”
• And to whatever degree there still is some tension, as there is at times in our world, between the noncharismatic and the charismatic world.
• These two closing verses say almost all that we need to hear:
• To the noncharismatics, “Don’t exclude any spiritual gift;”
• To the charismatics: “Don’t see how wild you can get. Do everything decently and in order.”[7]

 
RESURRECTION ESSENTIAL TO THE GOSPEL
1 CORINTHIANS 15
1 Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preached to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold to the message I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.

• It’s not surprising because, while bodily resurrection was commonplace in the Jewish world (indeed all but the Sadducees of the major leadership sects strongly believed in it), it was not at all common in the Graeco-Roman world.
• Much more common was a belief in a disembodied immortality of the soul, if indeed there was a hope for an afterlife at all.
• The movie “Soul” – Conveyer belt of souls to the big bug zapper in the sky. What?
• And here is the potential creed or early Christian confession: “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.”[8]

6 Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters at one time; most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one born at the wrong time, he also appeared to me.

• Jesus appeared to the witnesses and disciples within 40 days of his resurrection from the tomb.
• The 500 plus brethren all saw Him at the same time, so it could not have been a hallucination or a deception.
• Mass hallucination has occurred numbers of times throughout history, but always in conjunction with a place and a visible, tangible, physical element of some kind—a statue of a person perhaps, or a painting, or an icon, a holy shrine.
• There was nothing in common about the locations or the contexts of all the places that Jesus was said to have appeared.[9]
• This event may have been just before His ascension[10]
• For Paul, it was within 2-3 years from Jesus’ resurrection, on the road to Damascus.

9 For I am the least of the apostles, not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

• 1 Timothy 1:15 - This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them.[11]
• Paul is referring to his life before his spiritual conversion and transformation.

10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11 Whether, then, it is I or they, so we proclaim and so you have believed.

• He acknowledges his utter unworthiness to even being the recipient of this gracious—three times referring to the concept of God and His grace—being the recipient of this gracious touch from God’s Spirit, and puts himself on a level playing field, neither above nor below these other apostles because of this experience.
• “Whether it was they or I who preached, it was this same gospel.”
• It was the gospel that you believed.
• The bodily resurrection is central to it all.[12]

 
RESURRECTION ESSENTIAL TO THE FAITH
12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say, “There is no resurrection of the dead”?

• Those of you Corinthians who are still inappropriately influenced by your Graeco-Roman background, who don’t believe in the resurrection of a dead person ever, let’s think through the logic that inexorably follows from that.
• That means that our teaching that Jesus was raised is false.
• But if He was not raised bodily, then our teaching that we can look forward, one day, to all the wrongs of this world being righted in a glorious and perfected and eternal future of incomparable joy and blessing is equally false.[13]

13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised; 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain, and so is your faith. 15 Moreover, we are found to be false witnesses about God, because we have testified wrongly about God that he raised up Christ—whom he did not raise up, if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. 18 Those, then, who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished. 19 If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone.

• This is very similar to putting our hope in 2021.
• Yes, 2020 was a dumpster fire for many.
• That’s because they view life from a worldly perspective.
• The perspective of 2020 is different for those who stay focused on the resurrection of Christ and the eternal abundant life that is afforded to us.

 
CHRIST’S RESURRECTION GUARANTEES OURS
20 But as it is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

• Once you saw the first of the crops, you knew that there were plenty more to come, even if not instantly.
• And that’s what Paul is saying about Christ’s resurrection compared to ours.[14]

21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. 22 For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
23 But each in his own order: Christ, the firstfruits; afterward, at his coming, those who belong to Christ. 24 Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he abolishes all rule and all authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be abolished is death. 27 For God has put everything under his feet., Now when it says “everything” is put under him, it is obvious that he who puts everything under him is the exception. 28 When everything is subject to Christ, then the Son himself will also be subject to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all.[15]

• There is a functional subordination of the Son and Spirit to God.
• The Father never proceeds from the Son or the Spirit; the Son and the Spirit never command or send God the Father to do anything.
• But God rightly commands and sends the Son and the Spirit to do things.[16]

[1] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[2] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[3] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[4] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, pp. 615–616). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
[5] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[6] Christian Standard Bible. (2020). (1 Co 14:26–40). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
[7] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[8] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[9] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[10] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 617). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
[11] Christian Standard Bible. (2020). (1 Ti 1:15). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
[12] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[13] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[14] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[15] Christian Standard Bible. (2020). (1 Co 15:1–28). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
[16] Blomberg, C. L. (2017). NT334 Book Study: Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.