Sep 29, 2017
You didn’t want to get on Paul’s bad side. He was a loving, patient man, but he also had a strong intolerance for anything or anyone who would dare disturb the unity of the local church. He was willing to go to the mat with anyone who felt they had the right to reach inside the body of Christ and wreak havoc on the love and unity that was supposed to be there. In this episode, we’ll be in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, verses 17-34. I’ve called it, “Family Dysfunction” because Paul is going to deal with a situation within the local family of God that was resulting in some serious problems. And it all revolved around one of the most important ordinances of the church, given to us by Christ and designed to commemorate His sacrificial death on behalf of sinful men and women. The divisions and disunity that marked the church in Corinth had made their way into the celebration of the Lord’s Table or communion. Intended to be a unifying and community building experience, the taking of the bread and wine, symbols of Christ’s broken body and shed blood, had been turned by the Corinthians into into a time marked by divisiveness and disunity. And he was not going to put up with it. Christ died so that we might be made right with God and one with all those who share our faith in Christ. Disunity in any form is dysfunctional at best and destructive at worst.