1 Cor. 12-15
Hi, this is Sue and I just might get in trouble with this blog on 1 Cor. 12-15.
There’s a lot in this passage about the structure of the church. We’re baptized into Christ’s body and we all receive the same Spirit, we’re all given a spiritual gift, we’re all a part of the body of Christ, we’re all needed, we are to care for each other equally and our highest goal is to be love…No kings or high muckymucks or privileged ones. This is a picture of equality.
It is amazing that there were Gentiles and slaves in the early church. Jews accepting that God would save Gentiles was big! Accepting the equality of slaves was mind boggling!
If I’m reading this correctly, the Christians who were slaves were given the same Spirit as the free people, were given at least one spiritual gift, were needed in the body and were to be cared for as much as others.
And some of the slaves were given the gifts of leadership, teaching, prophecy, wisdom and others. Their social status as slaves meant nothing in the church. Now--some would say that God wouldn’t give those gifts to slaves…as well as other groups of people. However, it doesn’t say that here…or anywhere else.
Hierarchy, including slavery, is not God’s idea. Love and equality are his ways. From what we read here, we can conclude that God calls and gifts people without regard to social status, gender, race and often times even age. Some of the apostles were quite young.
The early church doesn’t appear to be called to a big public civil rights campaign but the structure of the body was a huge blow to hierarchy, including slavery. And today we are called to continue the shift to love and equality.
Sue
No comments:
Post a Comment