GREETINGS IN THE LORD
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on May 31, 2020 under 2020 |
Bethany Bible Church Sunday Message; May 31, 2020 from 1 Corinthians 16:15-18
Theme: Our devotion to the Lord is demonstrated by our affection for one another in the Lord.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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Paul—under the leading of the Holy Spirit—had written many remarkable words of instruction and exhortation to his Corinthian brothers and sisters in Christ. Much of what he had to say was intended to correct serious problems they were having in belief and in practice. And throughout it all, he always pointed to Jesus Christ as the solution. We saw this in the solution to every problem that he addressed. The problems were caused by the people of God having lost sight of the Lord Jesus. And placing Jesus once again at the very center of their devotion was always the solution.
And now, at the close of the letter, we once again see the attention placed on Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 16:19-24, Paul wrote to these Corinthian Christians and said:
The churches of Asia greet you. Aquila and Priscilla greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house. All the brethren greet you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. The salutation with my own hand—Paul’s. If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed. O Lord, come! The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen (1 Corinthians 16:19-24).
Look at those words carefully. Five times in these six verses, the idea of a warm ‘greeting’ shows up—four times in the form of the word ‘greet’; and once in the form of the English word ‘salutation’ (which, in the original language is the same Greek root word as the one translated ‘greet’). And five times in these six verses, the Lord Jesus is mentioned—once as the source of the greeting, once in a blessing of grace, once as the context of love, once in the form of an imprecation, and once in an expressed hope for His soon return.
So; even in these closing words, we have set before us a picture of genuine love for one another in the body of Christ—expressed in the exchange of warm greetings—in the context of serious devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ.
What a powerful conclusion to a powerful letter! And how relevant this is for our day! What an example this sets before the watching world around us!
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The centrality of the Lord Jesus to our warm affection for one another in the church is a wonderful thing to think about. And it was illustrated to me personally in a powerful way the other day.
A dear sister in the Lord—a part of our church family—had been planning for a while to do some work on some of the flower gardens around the church building. She finally had some spare time, and was working on the gardens just the other evening. I met her outside; and we talked for a little bit until I had to go into the parsonage to begin making dinner for my wife and me. And just as I got started on dinner, I had an accident and very severely cut myself—actually slicing off a large portion of one of my fingers. I was bleeding quite a bit; and my wife, who has a disability, could not drive me to ER. Given the nature of my injury and the amount of bleeding, it would have been difficult—if not impossible—to drive myself safely.
But our sovereign Lord had providentially granted that this sister be there at just that time. She quickly loaded me into her car and got me to where I could get some help. She waited in the car until my treatment was completed, and then drove me home. She even had some chocolate bars handy for me; because she knew I had missed my dinner. We had a lot of fun chatting and laughing about it all on the way back to the parsonage. And when she dropped me off, we prayed and thanked God together, It was just a wonderful example of how the fellowship and mutual care and friendship between believers is made all the sweeter by the conscious awareness of the Lord Jesus being in the middle of it all—orchestrating it all—providing in it all.
That’s what makes our bond together in the church so much different from any other kind of relationship out in the world. Or perhaps I should say, that’s Who makes our bond different. When you think about it, all of our relationships in the Body of Christ—whenever they are at their best—are always ultimately three-party relationships. Whether it is one individual believer in fellowship with one other believer; or one group of believers ministering to one individual believer; or one group of believers in fellowship with another group of believers—whatever the configuration may be—it is always bound together and made sweet by the presence of the third Member in the relationship, the Lord Jesus Himself, at the very center. As the apostle Paul once put it;
Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others (Philippians 2:1-4).
After saying this, Paul then pointed to the One who makes that kind of unity possible;
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:1-11).
When Jesus is kept in the place where He should be in our fellowship with one another, the fellowship is truly wonderful. And so, it’s essential that He indeed be kept in the center. That is why Paul made the very strong point he made in our passage this morning. They seem like harsh words. He said, “If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed. O Lord, come!” But if Jesus is who the Bible says that He is to us, then those words are appropriate. He must occupy the most important place in our affections. If He’s first in my affections, and if He’s first in your affections, then we both share the same fundamental affection for the same Lord. We, therefore, have the basis for truly sweet, satisfying, abiding fellowship and love for one another through Him—a fellowship and love that overcomes all external and superficial and temporal divisions that may separate us.
That’s what stands out so clearly in these closing words. That’s why they are so important for us to take the time to consider together. They show us that our affection and love and devotion for the Lord Jesus is put on display through our affection and love and devotion for each other in Him.
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Now; let’s look a little more closely at these closing greetings. You can divide them up into three sections. First come the greetings that Paul passed on to the Corinthian Christians from other believers. Then comes Paul’s appeal to them to greet one another in the church family. And finally, he passes on his own greetings to them. And in all of it, Jesus is kept at the forefront.
First, then, consider the greetings …
1. FROM OTHERS IN THE BODY OF CHRIST.
In verse 19, Paul began by offering a greeting from other churches. He wrote, “The churches of Asia greet you.” These are churches of another nation—another people group from that of the Corinthians. I love what one commentator said about this; that in this greeting, you get a sense of the kingdom of ‘nations’ coming to an end, and a new kingdom ‘in Christ’ coming into being.
Who are ‘the churches of Asia’? These would be the churches of Asia Minor—the chief city of which would have been Ephesus. Paul was most likely writing this letter from Ephesus. But it would have included churches in other cities as well. We get a very good idea of who they were in the Book of Revelation. It was in Chapter 1 that the voice of the Lord Jesus told John;
“What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea” (Revelation 1:11).
When Jesus is at the center, different churches in different social contexts cease to be in competition with each other. They are not rival churches. Instead, they are sister churches. I love it when one church that’s devoted to Jesus greets another church that’s devoted to Jesus, or when one such church partners with another in the work of the kingdom, or when one church gets together to worship Jesus with another; don’t you?
And then Paul brought greetings from specific individuals. Any church is made up of individual believers; and in this case, Paul brings greetings from some individuals that the Corinthian believers would have known quite well. He wrote; “Aquila and Priscilla greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house.”
Aquilla and Priscilla were a husband and wife team that used to minister to the church in Corinth. We first meet them in Acts 18; where we’re told of how Paul first went to Corinth;
And he found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla (because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome); and he came to them. So, because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked; for by occupation they were tentmakers (Acts 18:2-3).
They gave Paul a home-base from which to minister in Corinth and to be used by God to form a church family in that city. And later on, Priscilla and Aquilla were used by God to lead a man named Apollos to the Lord—and Apollos was used greatly to advance the cause of Christ in Corinth. Acts 18 tells us that Apollos had been preaching about Jesus without really knowing Him or having a saving relationship with Him;
When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately (Acts 18:26).
In another ‘greeting’ section in the New Testament—in Romans 16—Paul wrote this about them;
Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their own necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. Likewise greet the church that is in their house (Romans 16:3-5).
You can’t help but think that it would have been a great encouragement—in all their troubles—for the Corinthian Christians to have received a greeting from their dear fellow-Corinthians, Aquila and Priscilla, who had had such a formative impact upon their faith in Jesus. Paul made sure that the greetings he passed on were personal; and from individuals that were known and loved in Jesus.
And finally, note that Paul passed a greeting on from the brethren at large. In verse 20, he wrote, “All the brethren greet you.” Who were ‘the brethren? Paul had mentioned them in verse 12. They were apparently those with whom it was hoped that Apollos would travel back to Corinth. So, it is most likely a group of Christians who were ministering with Paul and his missionary team—a group of Christian workers that would have been so well known to the Corinthians that Paul wouldn’t have had to give their names. Just saying ‘the brethren’ would have been enough. They may have even included the three faithful men from Corinth that were with Paul right then—whom Paul mentions in verse 17 as “Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus—who had ministered to Paul on the behalf of the Corinthian church. Notice that Paul says that they “all” send their greeting, It was a unified expression of love.
And what’s wonderful in this is that Paul considered it a necessary part of his ministry—and even a privilege—to pass on the greetings from one group of believers to another. He was being an instrument of the unifying power of Jesus to sweeten the fellowship of Jesus’ followers. What a great thing that is to do! We can all do that as well.
Now; Paul was not only a conduit through which greetings were passed from others to the Corinthian church; but he also encouraged the members of the church to minister love to one another. So next we see how he sought to encourage greetings…
2. TO EACH OTHER IN THE CHURCH FAMILY.
In verse 20—right after telling them that all the brethren greet them; almost as a follow-up exhortation that flowed from that fact—he then wrote; “Greet one another with a holy kiss.”
In that culture, a kiss was a common form of greeting. It still is in many places in the world today. And while we, in our culture, may not be used to such a thing—and while we may not be able to start doing such a thing in our current circumstances even if we wanted to—the idea behind it is certainly one we can identify with. It’s the idea of a personal, warm. loving expression of affection. It’s something that we today would express through a hug, or a warm handshake, or a friendly ‘high-five”. Perhaps, in our current circumstance, it’s only an air-hug and a warm smile with the words, “I love you”, uttered from beneath the mask. Paul calls it a “holy” kiss, perhaps, to differentiate it from the kind of kiss that would not be appropriate. But I like to think that, more than that, it speaks of an expression that is “holy” because it has our common love for Jesus as its motivation. It’s “holy”; because it’s sanctified as an expression of love in Jesus from one saint to another,
I’ve noticed that, when I’m preaching on Facebook Live, many of those who are listening in send notes of greeting to one another—and even click the “heart” button on to one another’s comments, Dear brothers and sisters in Christ; even in our current circumstances—to the degree we are able to be with each other—we should find ways to share a holy expression of warm greeting and affection to one another.
And finally, notice one more category of greeting; and that’s …
3. FROM THE APOSTLE HIMSELF.
Paul himself—who at times in this letter had to write some hard things—wanted to express his affection to these believers that he loved so much. And notice how he does so. First, he does so with authenticity. In verse 21, he writes, “The salutation with my own hand—Paul’s.” Do you remember way back in the first verse of this letter that Paul said it was co-written by a man he called “Sosthenes our brother”? Apparently, Paul dictated his letter; and this Christian gentleman in Ephesus named Sosthenes wrote down what he had said. But at this point in the letter, Paul must have said; “And now dear brother; please give me the pen. I want to write these final words in my own hand.”
There might have been some practical reasons for doing this. In his letter to the Galatians, he wrote, “See with what large letters I have written to you with my own hand!” (Galatians 6:11). He did this because he had bad eyesight; and he wanted them to see that it really was a letter from him. When he wrote his second letter to the Thessalonian believers, he was concerned because some of them had been confused by ‘fake letters’—written by someone else as if they were from him; so, at the end of that letter, he wrote; “The salutation of Paul with my own hand, which is a sign in every epistle; so I write” (2 Thessalonians 3:17). And so; Paul may have wanted the Corinthian believers to know that this truly was an authentic greeting—and an authentic letter—from someone who was an authentic apostle of Jesus Christ.
And perhaps it was especially important that the authenticity of this greeting was established; because it was also given with seriousness. In verse 22, we find those solemn words: “If anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed. O Lord, come!“
Paul uses two words here that—in the old King James Version—were left untranslated. The first was the Greek word anathema. It means “to be a thing that is devoted”. But the intention was to speak of a negative kind of devotion—that of being devoted to destruction; to be ‘accursed’ in the sense of being destined to be destroyed in divine wrath. And the second word—maranatha—is a word from the Aramaic language that was in common use among the Jewish people of ancient times. It meant either an appeal (“O Lord, come”) or an affirmation (“Our Lord has come”). Did you know that that’s the last expression desire in the Bible? In Revelation 22:20, it says, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!” And when we put them together as Paul does in this verse, the meaning is this: “I have been expressing to you dear Corinthian believers some words of affection in the form of various greetings. But if anyone does not have affection for the Lord Jesus—if anyone among you does not, in fact, “kiss”1 Him in the sense that they love Him—then let it be known that Jesus is indeed coming again; and let that person be accursed on the day that He comes! But even so, my heart yearns, ‘O come soon, dear Lord Jesus!”
These surely are serious words! But let’s consider why they were necessary. If Jesus is who the Bible tells us that He is, then to choose not to love Him is a dreadful act of rebellion against God. God gave His only Son into this world that, by believing on Him, we might be saved. And so, to refuse to love Him is to knowingly reject the grace of God.2 It is also to reject the loveliest that there is—because there is no one more lovely than the Son of God in human flesh. To not love Him is to prefer instead the ugliness of the sin that Jesus came to save us from. And to not love Jesus is to refuse to love the One that loved us at the cost of His own life. How horrible!
Paul offers a greeting to his brothers and sisters; but it comes in a serious context. We must keep Jesus at the center of our affections. Otherwise, we cannot have the holy fellowship Jesus Himself wants us to have—either with His Father or with one another.
Now; in the context of those serious words, I’m grateful that Paul also offers his own greetings with graciousness. In verse 23, he wrote, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” And may it be that everyone who would hear those solemn words about Jesus would also enter into God’s grace through Him!
Did you know that this was Paul’s standard close in all his letters? When he wrote to the Thessalonian believers, he told them, “The salutation of Paul with my own hand, which is a sign in every epistle; so I write.” And then he added this: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all” (2 Thessalonians 3:18). If you’ll go through and look at all of Paul’s letters, you’ll find that he ends every one of them with a similar wish of grace. In fact, he began this letter with the greeting, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:3). God’s grace—His rich favor and blessings as a free gift through faith in Jesus Christ—was the great theme of Paul’s ministry.
What a wonderful greeting! What great fellowship and affection we share together as the recipients of that grace through the Lord Jesus! No wonder He needs to be in the center-place of our fellowship! That’s how we can truly offer a greeting of grace to each other.
And finally, Paul offers his greeting with love. In the last verse of this letter, he writes, “My love be with you all in Christ Jesus” (v. 24).
Personally, those words make me marvel. I think of Paul as one of the greatest writers in history. His writings have had more of a transforming influence for good in this world than almost any philosopher or thinker than you can name. And yet, could you imagine any other great writer of great ideas ending his treatise by saying, “I love you, dear reader”?—let alone saying, “My love be with you all in Christ Jesus”? That really shows us who Paul loved most of all.
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With these words of greeting, then, we come to the end of our study of 1 Corinthians. But may all of the lessons we have learned from this letter over the past couple of years be summarized in this idea: Keep Jesus first in your affections. It will be the solution to every problem we face together or in our relation to the surrounding world. Even the degree of our affection for one another will show whether or not Jesus is first in our love.
As Jesus Himself has said;
“By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
1“Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him” (Psalm 2:12).
2The seriousness of this is shown to us in Hebrews 10:26-31; “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
EA
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