The Expositor's Bible: The First Epistle to the CorinthiansDods, Marcus
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The First Epistle to the Corinthians
Dods, Marcus
Bible. Corinthians, 1st -- Commentaries
Spiritual men are those who can say, with Paul, "We have received, not
the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might
know the things that are freely given to us of God." What men's eyes
need especially to be opened to is the bounty of God and the
consequent wealth and hopefulness of human life. Paul's wondering
delight in God's grace and loving adaptation of Himself to human needs
continually finds utterance in his writings. His own sense of
unworthiness magnified the forgiving mercy of God. He rejoiced in a
Divine love which was passing knowledge, but which he knew could be
relied upon to the utmost. The vision of this love opened to his hope
a vista of happiness. There is a natural joy in living that all men
can understand. This life in many ways appeals to our thirst for
happiness, and often it seems as if we needed nothing more. But, in
one way or other, most of us learn that what is naturally presented to
us in this world is not enough, indeed only brings in the long run
anxiety and grief. And then it is that, by God's grace, men come to
find that this life is but a small lagoon leading to, and fed by, the
boundless ocean of God's love beyond. They learn that there is a hope
that cannot be blighted, a joy that is uninterrupted, a fulness of
life that meets and satisfies every instinct, and affection, and
purpose. They begin to see the things which God hath prepared for them
that love Him, the things that are freely given to us of God--"freely
given," given without desert of ours, given to make us happy, given
by a love that must find expression.
But to know and appreciate the things which are freely given to us of
God a man must have the Spirit of God. For God's gifts are spiritual;
they attach to character, to what is eternally ours. They cannot be
received by those who refuse the severity of God's training and are
not alive to the reality of spiritual growth, of passing from a carnal
to a spiritual manhood. The path to these eternal, all-satisfying joys
may be hard; Christ's path was not easy, and they who follow Him must
in one form or other have their faith in the unseen tested. They must
really, and not only in word, pass from dependence on this present
world to dependence on God; they must somehow come to believe that
underneath and in all we here see and experience lies God's
unalterable, unmingled love, that ultimately it is this they have to
do with, this that explains all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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