My Reflection on Corinthians

I found the Corinthians course to be a very interesting course. I wish I had more time to digest what I was receiving. I did not have that luxury of time due to the arrival of my baby and new flat. However, there many learning points I have received from the course. I will be sharing six of them through this blog entry.

Firstly, God spoke to me about relinquishing my personal rights. As I was reading 1 Corinthians early this year God spoke to me from 1 Corinthians 6:7, “Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?” As I pondered about it, it came to me that the unity and the testimony of the church were more important than my personal justice.

This was really a timely word for me. This was as I was going through a rather difficult time in my life. The destabilisation of my personal life coupled with new stresses from ministry caused me to demand for my personal rights a little bit more. This timely word was part of the restoration process that God was doing in my life.

Secondly, I found the concept of 3 kinds of man to be very interesting. The 3 kinds of man are the natural man, a man without the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 2:14), the spiritual man (1 Cor 2:15-16) and the worldly man (1 Corinthians 3:1-4).

When I did my life history for one assignment of the course I discovered that my life history can be roughly divided into three major periods which were 0-16 years old, 17-33 years old and 34-35 years old.

The first period (0-16 years old) was where I lived as a natural man. The second period (17-33 years old) was where I generally lived as a spiritual man. The third period (34-35 years old) was a difficult period of time in my life due to the destabilisation of my personal life coupled with new stresses from ministry. During this period of time I was reacting to my situations as a worldly man in an increasing measure.

I am so thankful things are turning around. I believe that since a few months ago I was beginning to enter into the fourth period of my life. I am beginning to live my life as a spiritual man in increasing measure once again. I pray that God will always remind me and empower me to live as a spiritual man. This is the kind of life where I would have nothing to hide, nothing to lose and nothing to prove. This is the kind of life where I am living my life truly for the audience of one.

Thirdly, I found the similarities between Corinth and Singapore to be fascinating. Through the lectures and the group assignment work I appreciated in a deeper measure how similar the two cities were. I believe that it is important to ponder about the implications of these similarities as it would affect the way we do ministry today.

A possible theme for the Epistle of 1 Corinthians is to be a godly church in an ungodly city. The city of Corinth was clearly influenced by the ungodly values of their world. This is also clearly the struggles that the churches in Singapore are facing right now. This makes 1 Corinthians to be a highly relevant and practical epistle to study and apply for our ministries today.

A practical step I intend to do after the completion of the course is to review the material once again not as an academic requirement but as a necessary step for the ministries God is entrusting unto me. I need to learn from the successes and failures of the Corinthian church. I need to learn from Paul, how he ministered to a problematic church that every church in Singapore can easily evolve into owing to the great similarities of their contexts.

Fourthly, one motivation of generous giving is to glorify God. This is one of sermon points for our group assignment project. This is a refreshing idea to me. We often talk about how we will never be able to shortchange God. If we are generous in our giving God will be even more generous towards us. While this is a biblical idea it seems that this idea is a little overused.

However, the idea that our generous giving would cause people to glorify God is a fresh idea. When we are generous with our giving we are creating an environment for believers to glorify God through their thanksgiving unto God for meeting their needs. When we are generous with our giving we are also creating an environment where non-believers can glorify God through their acceptance of God’s love or even the Gospel.

This idea is a fresh motivation for me to be a generous giver. I pray that God will help me and lead me to give generously to both believers and non-believers and that it would result in both believers and non-believers glorifying God in a big way.

Fifthly, my friendship with some classmates went a little deeper through this course. I remember Brother Casey sharing with us in one lecture that if we would get a good grade for the course but fail to make a new friend through the course then the course would not be a success to us. That was one reason why he insisted for the class to do a group project.

That was a good idea. However, I honestly did not expect for God to use my group project to deepen my friendship with my group-mates. These two semesters, I am having some difficulties finding time for my studies due to the arrival of my baby and new flat. Some of my group members were also facing their own personal challenges. This caused some of us not to be so punctual in doing our parts for our group project. To cut a long story short, this led to some heart-to-heart talk among the group project-mates midway through the group project. It was a quality talk that helped me to appreciate and cherish my group-mates more. I am thankful for the grace they rendered to me. I feel that our friendship goes a little deeper through the incident. At least, this is what I personally felt.

I want to conclude my blog reflection with an insight I gleaned from the commentary on the book of 1 Corinthians written by Gordon D. Fee. Fee argues on page 616 when commenting on 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, “Paul’s concern is for diversity, on the one hand, and for mutual concern in the body, on the other.” It came to me that it takes a mature church to be able to genuinely appreciate diversity and show true appreciation of the different members of the church. The Church in Corinth could not do it then. I am not sure if they could do it following Paul’s exhortation. But I sincerely pray that the churches in Singapore in the 21st century can do it with the grace of our God.