How to have a Healthy Church pt 4

1 Corinthians 3:1-4

Prayer concerns

How have you seen God work this week?

What gospel conversations were you able to have?

Prayer

Introduction: How to have a healthy church. A healthy church has unity by knowing what is important and what is unimportant. A healthy church obtains the wisdom of God and not the wisdom of man. A healthy church obtains the wisdom of God through the Spirit. This seemed to be a new idea to the church as Paul explains it more fully at the beginning of chapter 3. The Corinthian church was not looking at culture, ideas, and things through the lens of the wisdom of God. They were not looking at things with a spiritual focus. Paul is going to make this abundantly clear by revisiting an idea that he has already mentioned.

Reading of the scripture: For my part, brothers and sisters, I was not able to speak to you as spiritual people but as people of the flesh, as babies in Christ. 2 I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, since you were not yet ready for it. In fact, you are still not ready, 3 because you are still worldly. For since there is envy and strife, among you, are you not worldly and behaving like mere humans? 4 For whenever someone says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not acting like mere humans? [1]

Prayer

How to have a healthy church?

A healthy church has mature believers in it.

· What is a mature believer?

Speak to Spiritually

What does it mean to be able to speak to someone spiritually? This word here “spiritually” has the idea of “from the spirit” or “spiritually conducted” Have you ever had a pastor tell you something you did not want to hear? I tread lightly with that question because I’m fully aware that that pastor could be me. We are quick to disagree and discount something because it offends or hurts us. Someone that can be spoken to spiritually is able to accept that offense and hurt knowing that the other person is simply trying to follow God. Perhaps it is not the pastor or fellow Christian that is offending you. Maybe, it is the Spirit of God convicting you. They could be wrong, but you know when you can be spoken to spiritually when you can truth that is uncomfortable and apply that to your life. Are you able to do that? Are you one of those people that like to have their ears tickled?

Not able to be spoken to as spiritual people

Sanctified

It would seem, that the majority of Paul’s audience here were believers. The majority of the believers may have been week in faith and immature but they were justified by the blood of Christ. This solid food is the hard word that comes after being justified. A continually work and even if I could go a step further a continually battle from your soul to eradicate sin. To become more holy.

Babies

Holy

The word holy means to be set apart. Now Paul doesn’t specifically say the mature Christian was holy, but he did say that the immature was worldly and the opposite of that is, of course holy. When people see your life, do they know you are a Christian? Do they see you conversing differently? Do they see you prioritize correctly? Or do they see the same thing that is in everyone else? God created us for something better than to just “fit in”. He created to be his child and to please him. We do that by becoming more and more holy in our everyday life.

Worldly

Contentment

Same as with holy this isn’t mentioned but can easily be implied because of the envy. Let me be clear, I don’t think we should ever have contentment with our developing Relationship with Christ. However, in our professional status, social life, children, all of these things will never feel the void that we all have. The only thing that will feel that void is the gospel message. We have a certain amount of contentment when we have the gospel message and understand it correctly. Because all of a sudden all of those other things are not important anymore. At the end of the day you can prop your feet up and say I have a relationship with God that will net me more than anything else that this world has to offer.

Envy

Unity

Strife

Acting wisely

Acting foolishly

Follows Jesus

Follows People

[1] Christian Standard Bible. (2020). (1 Co 3:1–4). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.