21 May 2023
In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul isn't sharing any actual Covenant law, but berating the Corinthians for thinking that spiritual gifts import a hierarchy of some sort. This is actually a continuing warning from the previous chapter about taking the Lord's Supper in simplicity and true communion.
They had turned the gifts of the Spirit into a circus sideshow, and he warned them to stop seeking the more popular gifts. Just take what God doles out in His wisdom. Again, we are the Body of Christ, and we are all different parts, yet all essential. And if that were not enough, in Chapter 13 he offers a winsome image of the single command Christ gave at His Last Seder, that we should love each other as He did. Jesus is the Living Law.
Then in Chapter 14, he backtracks just enough to say that the one most useful spiritual gift is to prophesy. In other words, speaking in tongues is not the premier gift everyone should pursue. Then he presents a procedural instruction about how to use tongues and prophecy in worship.
But he returns to the ancient Hebrew custom from synagogue worship that women cannot speak out loud in worship, whether in tongues or prophecy. It's not that women cannot exercise spiritual gifts, but that in formal worship, a woman must demonstrate the one most important principle of divine feudalism and stay quiet until she can discuss it with her covering male head in private. This is from God.
In Chapter 15 Paul addresses the issue of the Resurrection. This was the issue he faced in Athens, in that pagan Greek mythology insisted that this world is all that exists, and there could be no eternal spirits. Even the underworld was accessible from here, as was the abode of the gods. This is reflected in Aristotelian assumptions about reality. And when the Pharisees began adopting Hellenistic reasoning, they didn't lose their belief in a spiritual realm, but the Hellenism forced them to spookify Eternity. The Pharisees ditched all the Ancient Near Eastern lore of about the spiritual realm because they could not reconcile that ancient awareness with Aristotelian logic, so they simply pretended not to understand any more. It remained a mere point of legalistic doctrine.
Paul seeks to restore a sensible understanding for the Jewish Christians and to hammer it down solid for the Grecian Christians: We are eternal beings trapped in a fleshly body. This world is not ultimate reality. A revelation of ultimate reality is coming, the Resurrection of the Elect to their spiritual form, to be heralded by a mighty heavenly trumpet blast.
The last chapter is more administrative stuff about the relief offering and some personnel matters. There's no more Christian Law covered in this letter. In the first few chapters of 2 Corinthians, he runs through a lot of personal stuff, trying to remind them once again how precious a treasure the people are to him. Then, in Chapter 5 he reiterates the theme of our dual nature that matches the dual nature of Creation. Walking in faith means paying more attention to the spiritual realm and its priorities.
In Chapter 6 he reinforces this image by rattling off a list of earthly troubles he has experienced in pursuit of the gospel message. It becomes an item of Christian Law that we do not bind ourselves in any human fashion with non-believers. He's obviously not suggesting that we cannot befriend them, but that we cannot make any commitments that would compromise our divine calling in Christ. That would obviously include marriage to outsiders, but it implies some standard business contracts are also out of bounds.
Thus, while there's not a lot of law in the chapters reviewed here, there is that one underlying otherworldly principle. Over and over again, Paul emphasizes that we must internalize the imagery of seeing things from a higher realm, and our only reason for staying in this world is the mission of glorifying Christ.
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