Devotional
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Daily Readings: 1 Corinthians 12 and Psalm 119:97-112 1 Corinthians is filled with Paul’s responses to issues confronting the Church in Corinth. In chapter 12 he turns to the question of spiritual gifts. Their pagan past had exposed them to many people with what looked a lot like the spiritual gifts they now saw in…
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Daily Readings: 1 Corinthians 11 and Psalm 119: 65-96 In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul’s concern was to teach the Christian community in Corinth to worship the Lord with the honour due to Him. That is the heart of everything that follows. When it comes to codes of dress for Christians attending worship, different people and…
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Daily Readings: 1 Corinthians 10 and Psalm 119:49-64 1 Corinthians 9 highlighted the importance of a single-minded pursuit of Christlikeness and God’s will in all things. In 1 Cor. 10, Paul uses the experiences of the Israelites in the wilderness to warn us against the temptations that might derail us from that pursuit. He warns…
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Daily Readings: 1 Corinthians 9 and Psalm 119:33-48 The Olympic Games is the most famous of all the ancient athletic competitions, but Corinth was the centre for the “Isthmian Games”, which was second in prestige only to the ancient Olympics. It is these games Paul had in mind as an illustration when he wrote to…
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Daily Readings: 1 Corinthians 8 and Psalm 119:17-32 In 1 Corinthians 8 Paul dealt with a controversial issue for Christians living in a majority pagan population who worshiped at the temples of the many Greek gods. To provide context: A portion of the meat of every animal sacrificed at a pagan temple belonged to the…
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Daily Readings: 1 Corinthians 7 and Psalm 119:1-16 In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul answered questions the Corinthian Christians had written to him about marriage, singleness, divorce, and sex. There appear to have been those among them who strongly believed that it was more spiritual to be celibate, even when one was married! But, writing under…
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Daily Readings: 1 Corinthians 6 and Psalm 118 1 Corinthians 6 is filled with Holy Spirit-inspired instruction and correction from Paul. Although he addressed a range of areas where the Corinthian Christians were falling into sinful tendencies, the heart of his instruction was to remind them that their salvation had begun with repentance from sin.…
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Daily Readings: 1 Corinthians 5 and Psalm 117 In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul warns the Church about its tolerance of a member who was known to be living in a flagrant, unrepentant, incestuous sexual relationship with his step-mother. In allowing this man to continue as normal in the fellowship of the Church despite his unrepentant…
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Daily Readings: 1 Corinthians 4 and Psalm 116 In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul wrote to correct the pride among the Corinthians Christians, and addressed sinful attitudes like being “puffed up” and “boasting”. These Corinthians had actually come to look down on Paul and the other apostles, whom they viewed as foolish, weak and dishonoured. By…
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Daily Readings: 1 Corinthians 3 and Psalm 115 16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives among you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple. As we saw in chapter 1, the Corinthian Church was being…
