Sermon 09-25-11 "Status"

How do you live in a culture obsessed with status? The Corinthian church lived in a culture of self-promotion, driven by an intense need for power and control. Paul sets forth “Christ crucified” – the release of need for power, control, and status. With a new status comes a new value system where status is bestowed, not made. Under the new status comes a new approach to love, service, gifts, sex, worship, and hope.

“Paul’s self humiliation and assumption of a servant role was directly at variance with the accepted values of Corinthian city culture . . . In such a culture a person’s sense of worth is based on recognition by others of one’s accomplishments.”

“A unifying theme in the book is a re-proclamation of the different value system of grace, gifts, the cross, and the resurrection as divine status bestowal. Glorying in the Lord and receiving status derived from identification with the crucified Christ lead to a new value system demonstrable in a wide array of life issues.”

Anthony Thiselton

“In this epistle, Paul exhorts the Corinthians to be on in faith and love, and to see to it that they learn well the chief thing, namely, that Christ is our salvation, the thing over which all reason and wisdom stumbles.”

Martin Luther

New sermon posted at reliantchurch.org