Session 2: Will Law
What are the things that have eternal worth to God? How do we build upon the foundation of Christ?
Session 2 of 5. Recorded on Saturday 5 November 2022 at Christ Church Winchester. View all the talks.
SPEAKER
Will Law will.law@kariskids.org
SCRIPTURE
1 Cor 3:9b–15
You are also God's building. 10 Using the gift that God gave me, I did the work of an expert builder and laid the foundation, and someone else is building on it. But each of you must be careful how you build. 11 For God has already placed Jesus Christ as the one and only foundation, and no other foundation can be laid. 12 Some will use gold or silver or precious stones in building on the foundation; others will use wood or grass or straw. 13 And the quality of each person's work will be seen when the Day of Christ exposes it. For on that Day fire will reveal everyone's work; the fire will test it and show its real quality. 14 If what was built on the foundation survives the fire, the builder will receive a reward. 15 But if your work is burnt up, then you will lose it; but you yourself will be saved, as if you had escaped through the fire.
2 Corinthians 1:12–14
12 Now this is our boast: Our conscience testifies that we have conducted ourselves in the world, and especially in our relations with you, with integrity and godly sincerity. We have done so, relying not on worldly wisdom but on God’s grace. 13 For we do not write you anything you cannot read or understand. And I hope that, 14 as you have understood us in part, you will come to understand fully that you can boast of us just as we will boast of you in the day of the Lord Jesus.
SOCIAL STATUS MARKERS IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD
class
wealth
education
family lineage
social connections
rhetorical skill
virtue of character
QUOTES
No one can expand this foundation by saying, “Let’s add on a new wing founded on wisdom,” or, “Let’s build a new building on the foundation of scientific knowledge,” or, “Our contemporary religious experience requires us to dismantle the foundation and reconstruct it in a different way.”
— Richard Hays - First Corinthians - Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011)
Instead of “till death do us part” how about “for as long as this feels healthy, safe, and meaningful for both of us”
— A very popular recent Tweet
No one among the philosophers has been able to purge one’s soul to such an extent as to love one’s enemy. Yet among us, you will find uneducated persons, and artisans, and old women who—even if they cannot prove the benefit of our faith through words—through their deeds they prove the benefit that results from our devotion: for they do not memorise speeches, but rather they exhibit good works; when struck, they do not strike back; and when they are robbed, they do not bring charges; to everyone who asks of them, they give; and they love their neighbours as themselves.
— Athenagoras (177 AD)
