1 Cor No.41 Final comments

This morning we read again from Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians. We're in chapter 16, and we're reading this morning from verse five. After I go through Macedonia, I will come to you, for I will be going through Macedonia.

Perhaps I will stay with you a while, or even spend the winter, so that you can help me on my journey, wherever I go. I do not want to see you now, and make only a passing visit. I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits.

But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me. If Timothy comes, see to it that he has nothing to fear while he is with you, for he is carrying on the work of the Lord, just as I am. No one then should refuse to accept him.

Send him on his way in peace, so that he may return to me. I am expecting him along with the brothers. Now about our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to go to you with the brothers.

He was quite unwilling to go now, but he will go when he has the opportunity. Be on your guard. Stand firm in the faith.

Be men of courage. Be strong. Do everything in love.

You know that the household of Stephanus were the first converts in Achaia, and they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints. I urge you brothers to submit to such as these, and to everyone who joins in the work and labors at it. I was glad when Stephanus, Fortunatus, and Achaicus arrived, because they have supplied what was lacking from you, for they refreshed my spirit and yours also.

Such men deserve recognition. The churches in the province of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets at their house.

All the brothers here send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss. I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand.

If anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be on him. Come, O Lord. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.

My love to all of you in Christ Jesus. Amen. Now may God add his blessing to that reading from his word.

Now I'd be glad if you'd have your Bibles open again. 1 Corinthians and chapter 16. The apostle Paul is drawing toward the end of this letter that he writes to this early Christian community, and it might be a temptation to skip his concluding comments.

It's one that we shall resist, and I think you will discover that it is right that we spend some time, and don't just skip these verses, because there's quite a lot for us to learn from the 19th and onwards of this final chapter. Let's make one or two opening observations before coming to what shall be the main part of the burden I want to share with you this morning. From the 19th verse, we gather that there was a tremendous sense of fraternity within the Christian community in Asia.

Here is Paul, you remember, at Ephesus, and yet he's writing to the Corinthians, and he says all the assemblies that have been founded in Ephesus and elsewhere, because it's been a very fruitful evangelistic ministry that he's occupied in Ephesus, all these churches send you greetings. They express their solidarity with the church in Corinth. And then he refers to Aquila and Priscilla, these rather remarkable Hebrew Christians, so remarkable that on one occasion, the apostle tells us in Romans that he owed his life to Aquila and Priscilla.

These were people who were mighty in the scriptures. They're referred to at least six times, their names together in the New Testament, and four of those occasions, Priscilla comes first, which I think is very interesting, perhaps indicating that she was a woman of tremendous spiritual stature, and in no way does the New Testament belittle women's ministry within the churches. There may be certain qualifications, there may be certain areas in which women have more gift and more enabling, and there may be others, like consistent expository ministry were to a mixed congregation, then there are prohibitions, but let us not overlook the magnificent ministry offered by the New Testament to women, as indicated in passing by Paul here, when he says, Aquila and Priscilla, greet you warmly in the Lord, and he also makes reference to the church that meets in their house.

They were people with means, and as you know, in the early days of the Christian community around the various parts of the Roman world where the message had penetrated, there were no churches like this, no church buildings, and so they would meet in various places. The lecture hall of Tirana, as you remember in Ephesus, that was one of the first meeting places of the Christians there. Well, some, although there weren't many Christians who had means, would open their homes, and their home would be the center where Christian activity would continue.

So Paul is making reference to these Hebrew Christians, these great people who greet the Corinthians warmly, and he says that their house is the meeting place for the local community, and then says the apostle, all the brothers here, all those who are with me in Ephesus, they all join me in sending fraternal greetings to you, and then he offers a little inducement to show affection one to the other by saying greet one another with a holy kiss. Six times the New Testament makes reference to this practice, and if you're very interested, you could work them out in a concordance which will give you the various occasions when this happens. The Eastern people were very affectionate indeed, and in the Greek Orthodox Church and some more Episcopalian churches, it is a practice at some point in the service to greet one another with a holy kiss.

I'm not advocating it personally, I'm just sharing it with you for you to form your own convictions. When I was in Latin America, speaking at one of the churches there with a congregation of one and a half thousand, I was very glad to be able to quickly get away from the church because there they're so affectionate and they take Paul literally, and with one and a half thousand people, you have to be quite athletic to be able to cope with the demands made upon you. In fact, I think my practice of jogging started in Latin America.

Well, here is the apostle, and as I say, he makes these very, very personal, warm directives to the church in Corinth, and then he does something that shall occupy the major part of our attention this morning. He takes the pen in his own hand and he starts to write himself from the 21st verse. You see, it's been his practice always, or invariably, to use a secretary when he writes his letters.

If you were to read through Romans chapter 16, you will find that his secretary is called Tertius, and at one point in that letter, Tertius writes a particular piece of greeting to the Roman Christians, and when Paul writes to the Thessalonians, again, at the end of the chapter of that second letter, reference is made to Paul using a secretary and concluding the final greeting himself. As though on occasions, there might be the possibility of letters circulating around the Christian communities purporting to come from Paul, and yet they're not, and so Paul shows that it is an authentic letter when he adds his own comments just at the end and he takes his signature, a very interesting thing that you discover, as I say, as you compare the final remarks of some of his letters. Romans, Second Thessalonians, and Corinthians in particular.

It seems that the letter to the Galatians he wrote entirely himself. Well, here is Paul, and he's dictated this very lengthy letter, and now he takes the stylus and he starts to write with a flourish one or two final words of greeting and admonition, and here it becomes very interesting. Because we are surprised at what Paul decides to write in the final verses that he personally appends to this letter.

Now, I know that there are some here who work from the authorized version of the New Testament and others from the NIV, so let me address some remarks to the AV section of my congregation, and the NIV section can just sleep for a minute, and then I will address you, and the AV folk can slumber for a second. First of all, then, those of you who are working from the authorized version, look at verse 22, and the apostle there says that if anyone does not love the Lord, and he quotes two terms which are very, very interesting. Anathema and Maranatha.

Anathema and Maranatha. Two things I want to say. First of all, there should be a full stop between both those words.

They don't run on. One word, anathema, is Greek. The other word, maranatha, is Aramaic, and it's very significant that Paul uses Aramaic, as I shall show you in a moment or so.

So those with the AV concentrate on those words, anathema and maranatha, and the significance of both of them, because they're almost opposite in meaning, I'll draw out in a moment. Now, you good friends with the NIV, you don't find anathema in the 22nd verse. What you find is a translation of that Greek term, a curse be on him.

That, in the Greek, is anathema, and then you don't find maranatha, or as I would prefer to pronounce it, maranatha. What you get is the interpretation, the translation, come, oh, Lord. Come, oh, Lord.

So here is the apostle, and he's got his stylus, and he's writing some personal comments, and with the flourish of his hand, he directs two words in different languages. He's not only bilingual, is Paul, he's multilingual, he speaks with languages more than any of the other Corinthians, and he speaks to them now in Greek, anathema, a curse, and in Aramaic, maranatha, the Lord come, a blessing. Now, you would miss this if you just casually read through these final comments, but as we dig them, I'll dig into them, you will see that they are highly significant.

Why does Paul, in the last part of his epistle, writing personally, use the word anathema? It sounds harsh, doesn't it? Do you ever use that word, or the translation of it, when you're writing a letter, a curse be on you? Well, as I say, it seems to us very, very surprising, if not shocking, why is Paul using this terminology? Well, the answer is this, the apostle is dedicated to the gospel of Jesus Christ. He believes that unless a man responds to the fact that Jesus bled and died on Calvary, there is no hope for him. Now, why does he use the word anathema? To pull that point into perspective in his final remarks, he does so because anathema means separated from God.

It's a very interesting word in the Old Testament, and if I had time, I'd show you how it completely changes its meaning, and when you move into the New Testament, you discover that it describes someone who is utterly cut off from the Lord. Now, you get that word on four different occasions, or five different occasions in the New Testament. Let's turn to one or two of them, and then you'll understand why the apostle uses it at the end of Corinthians.

Turn to Acts, and chapter 23, and verse 14. Acts 23, verse 14. I'll sketch the context as you're finding it.

There are some men who want to have Paul killed. Paul is back in Jerusalem. He's been preaching around the Roman world.

Many Jews have turned Christian, and as a result, the Jewish party, the traditional party in the holy city is offended, and there are those who take an oath that they will not eat until they have killed Paul. Acts 23, 14. They went to the chief priests and elders and said, we have taken a solemn oath not to eat anything until we have killed Paul.

We have taken an anathema. We are cutting ourselves off from God. We are cutting ourselves off from anything until we have killed Paul.

See how strong that term is. Used in a different way, at least a slightly different way, in Romans, chapter nine, and verse three, we come across Paul speaking of his great burden for his own kith and kin, for Jewish people who have not responded to the fact that Jesus is savior. And here he writes some of the most remarkable words that he ever pens when he is talking of himself.

For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race. Here is Paul engaging in an absurd thinking. He's running something that he knows is clearly impossible.

And yet he says, if it were possible to cut myself off from God and in the severing of myself from the Lord to bring Israel into salvation, then that is what I would be prepared to do. I would become anathema for the Lord. Let's have a look at another usage of that word.

1 Corinthians, chapter 12, back in our epistle. 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, and the third verse, where we read, I tell you that no one who is speaking by the spirit of God says, Jesus, be cursed. Seems that in Corinth, there had been an occasion when someone claiming to speak under the inspiration of the spirit had dared to say that Jesus was not the son of God, that Jesus is a curse, that Jesus is anathema.

And Paul says that that indicates in no way can they be stimulated, can they be influenced by the Holy Spirit. Now, the final occasion you come across that word is in Galatians and chapter one. Let's turn to that, Galatians, chapter one, and verse eight and nine.

Here, the apostle is arguing for the fact that there is only one gospel, and if anyone manipulates the gospel by subtracting from it or adding to it, then they will suffer eternally. Listen to him, Galatians 1, eight, but even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you, let him be eternally condemned. Anathema, as we have already said, so now I say again, if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what can be accepted, let him be eternally condemned.

Well, I have gone into the use of that word in the New Testament because it's most important for us to understand. The reason why Paul employs it again in 1 Corinthians 16, 22, he is saying, if anyone doesn't love the Lord Jesus, anathema. He's not imposing a curse.

He is rather isolating a condition. Did you hear that? Let me repeat it in case you didn't quite understand. Paul is not imposing a curse.

He is isolating a condition. What do I mean? My dear friends, it pains me to say this, but the man who does not love the Lord Jesus, and that word love is not agapeo, it's phileo, the man who has no emotional response to Jesus Christ, who can see him dying on the cross, who's been presented with the essentials of the gospel, the man who having had all this does not go out after the Lord Jesus in his heart, that man is under a curse. There are only two types of people in this world, the saved and the unsaved.

And the unsaved have a curse upon them. That's why Paul earlier in this epistle says, woe unto me if I preach not the gospel. What does the gospel do? It takes away the curse.

It makes a man or woman new in Christ Jesus. Ah, but there are those who when they hear the gospel, they don't respond to it. Paul recognizes this in the third verse of the fourth chapter of the next epistle, when he says, and if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.

The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. So you see how Paul is pulling the whole of his argument together. Here he is, he's got his stylus.

There's just a few words he's gonna write with his own hand. And he says, if anyone doesn't love the Lord, anathema, he remains cursed. Cursed, now that should pull the Corinthians up.

They've been scrapping about things that are not terribly important. Some of them need to be worked through. Paul in no way is objecting to the questions that come to him, but it's as though he's lifting the whole Corinthian community onto a higher level and say, do you recognize this? That in Corinth there are those who are accursed because they don't know the Lord Jesus Christ.

Woe am I if I preach not the gospel. Woe are you if you preach not the gospel. Communicate effectively to these people.

Otherwise, anathema, they are accursed. Or any of you who've just had a very superficial relationship with Jesus, if that's the case and you're turning away, remember my word, anathema, the curse of God is on you. Listen to the great Princeton theologian, Charles Hodge, commenting on this verse 100 years or so ago.

If our Lord be God over all and blessed forever, want of love to him is the violation of our whole duty. If he be not only truly God, but God manifested in the flesh for our salvation, if he unites in himself all divine and all human excellence, if he has so loved us as to unite our nature to his own and to humble himself and become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross that we might not perish, but have everlasting life, then our own hearts must ascent to the justness of the malediction pronounced even against ourselves if we do not love him. We must feel that in that case we deserve to be anathema.

Nay, we thereby are a finger cursed. We are an object of execration and loathing to all holy beings by the same necessity that holiness is opposed to sin. Well, that was the first word.

But the second word that's interesting in Paul's final comments from anathema, we move to maranatha or maranatha, a very interesting word which takes us into a happier concept. Let me talk to you about that word translated come O Lord in the New International Version of the Bible. This is the sole use of it in scripture.

You don't find it anywhere else in the New Testament. There's a hint of it in Revelation 22 and the penultimate verse when the writer says, even so come Lord Jesus. But here is this fascinating term, which as I told you is Aramaic.

Well, what's the significance of that? Well, to me, it's very interesting. You see, Paul's first language was probably Aramaic. As I say, he's multilingual.

He can handle Hebrew. He can handle Aramaic. He can handle Greek.

He can handle Latin. He has more languages at his fingertips than many of the Corinthians, indeed all of the Corinthians. But here in the final flourish of his pen, he goes back to his mother tongue and he quotes something that is often used amongst Jewish Christians there in the Holy Land.

Maranatha, anathema is a curse. Maranatha anticipates a blessing. Let me spell out that word for you in the Aramaic.

M-A-R means Lord. Ma, Lord. A-N or ana means hour.

So you've got Lord and hour and then you've got a problem. The final words, A-T-H, Arthur. It's a problem because it's very difficult to know in what tense you are to translate it.

It's got the idea of the English verb come. So we've got Lord and hour and then we've got come. But does it mean our Lord has come or does it mean that our Lord is coming or does it mean that our Lord will come? When Paul writes Maranatha, oh Lord come, what has he got at the back of his mind? Past tense, present tense, future tense.

Now I've really enjoyed watching the commentators scrap over this as they've done their work in translation and as I've been reading them through during these past weeks. Well, here is my suggestion that you can take the apostle Paul three ways. Our Lord Jesus Christ has come, Maranatha.

He came when he was born in Bethlehem. God is manifest in the flesh. When the apostle in 1 Corinthians 15 speaks of the resurrection of Christ, it presupposes the literal coming of Christ.

He has come. It was a real Jesus, not some phantom figure that we saw. John says, we not only saw him, but we touched him and we heard him, a real Jesus.

He came historically, the son of God, the second person of the ever-blessed Trinity, took flesh and blood and he dwelt amongst us. Maranatha, our Lord has come. And that's stupendous for Christian people to recognise.

We have a historic gospel around a historic saviour. But when the apostle is speaking about life at Corinth in the Christian community when it's properly constituted, it seems as though he anticipates the presence of Jesus at the very moment when Christians are gathering together. For example, forget the context, that's not important, but turn to chapter five and verse four of 1 Corinthians.

Here is Paul anticipating all of the brothers and sisters in the church joining together. And what does he have to say? 1 Corinthians chapter five, verse four. When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit and the power of our Lord Jesus is present.

Maranatha, our Lord has come. Our Lord is coming when all his children are gathered together. He's there in the midst.

Look, there's another illustration of it. Here in 1 Corinthians chapter 14. Here is an insight into the worship pattern at Corinth.

And says Paul in the 25th verse, when everything is proceeding properly and in order, imagine an outsider coming in. And someone has been proclaiming the benefits of the gospel and exposing something of the nature of the outsider. Verse 25, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare.

So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, God is really among you. You see the point that I'm trying to get? It's a very important one. I'm not just engaged in subtle arguing here.

Jesus came in the past, maranatha, the verb can be passive, but Jesus comes in the present. I say again, if you do not feel the presence of Christ when we're gathered together in the tabernacle, then I wonder whether God really wants you here or whether God wants you somehow or other to correct us. If we don't experience his presence, then it seems to me we are not an authentic expression of the body of Christ.

Where two or three are gathered together, there he is in the midst. He came, but he comes. But finally, according to the linguists who understand Aramaic, which I most certainly don't, there is the concept of the verb in the past, in the future.

And this we get throughout the whole of Corinthians, do we not? The idea of Jesus coming back again. It's there in the first chapter. Turn to it, will you? And the eighth verse, 1 Corinthians 1, verse eight.

Paul is encouraging the Corinthians to a consistent Christian life. I read from the seventh verse. Therefore, you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.

He will keep you strong to the end so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. There's the idea in the future. He's coming, he's coming again.

He's coming in great power and glory. You Christians at Corinth, be on tiptoe expecting the second advent. You get a similar idea in the fifth verse of the fourth chapter where the apostle tells us that the Lord will return as judge.

Chapter four, verse five. Therefore, judge nothing before the appointed time. Wait till the Lord comes when he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts.

And then if you understand this expression as I do in the 13th chapter, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, I believe he refers in the 10th verse to his second advent. From the ninth, he is saying, for we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, when the Lord comes with all the aggregates of perfection that he embodies, then there will be certain beneficial consequences. But you see the point.

The apostle here is bringing out the significance of this great Aramaic expression of love and dedication to the Lord. Maranatha, he came in the past. He comes now in our midst as we gather together as a corporate community, and he will come again in great power and glory.

Now, you Christians at Corinth, for whom Maranatha applies and not anathema, realize this verse 23, the grace of the Lord Jesus continues with you. All the blessings of the Christ are yours because you know him and you love him and you're waiting for his coming and you're basking in the glory of his first appearance and you're enjoying spiritually his presence as you come together in worship. You see what I mean, my friend, when I argued 20 minutes or so ago that if you didn't dig into this passage at a deep enough level, then this amazing reasoning would not have hit you.

Anathema, bleakness of a curse, that Paul underlines because he's dealing in great issues, reject the gospel and you're anathema, but accept the gospel and your word is not anathema. It's the word that they used to use back there in the Holy Land amongst those lovely Christian people with whom I met. How do we greet one another there? With a holy kiss, yes, and with words.

And what are those words? Maranatha, the Lord is come. The Lord is here amongst us. The Lord is going to come with great power and glory.

It's one of the most wonderful words in the whole of the vocabulary of the early church. They ascribe lordship to Jesus and they anticipate that he'll come again as he came the first time, though the incognito will be dropped, he will come with power and with great authority. And says Paul, and it's his final comment, my love to all of you in Christ Jesus.

Those who are with the AV, drop the amen, it wasn't there, it's been put in by some scribe somewhere in the early centuries. Paul concludes his address, my love to all of you in Christ Jesus. Here was this congregation at Corinth and they got some pretty odd people, you know.

It wasn't easy to be a Christian at Corinth, it's not easy to be a Christian in Worthing. And Paul has been hurt by some of these Christians. They've said some pretty nasty things about him.

They've accused him of this and that and it might well be that Paul has got some sort of grudge, but no, at the end he says, my love, Agape, my love to all of you, even the difficult ones. I still love you because you're not anathema. You're part of the company that recognize Maranatha, that the Lord has come.

And so I send you my love and my greetings. And so here we leave this remarkable epistle inspired by the spirit that Paul wrote centuries ago, which has great meaning and benefit for us here in the tabernacle today. But I ask you as my final comment for some while from 1 Corinthians, what word do you take out of this door of the tab with you? Anathema, cursed by God because you've rejected his gospel or rather Maranatha.

I acknowledge the Christ who inspired the Paul to write and I give him my life. And I look forward for his presence. Each time I come to worship him and I look into the future for his coming.

You see those final greetings, they needed to be analyzed. We accept the love of each other this morning. As we say in the name of Jesus, we love each other as Paul loved the church at Corinth with all its warts and with all its pimples.

He loved and we loved and we love. And our hope is Maranatha, the Lord will come. ♪ I can tell you of my Savior, of the Christ who died for me ♪ ♪ Born the fruit of the cross, his suffering shed his blood to set me free ♪ ♪ Gave his life to gain my heart, and then he rose triumphantly, my only Lord to me ♪ ♪ The gospel is with me now, the truth of Jesus set me free ♪ ♪ He has found me forth from tragedy, has victoriously replaced with my soul to honor me ♪ ♪ He crowns me with the keys of God, he is marching on, he is marching on ♪ And Father, our final response to that hymn and to the message of the Apostle Paul is Maranatha.

Even so come, Lord. Amen.