Final Greetings

Whether you're a part of a small church with a handful of faithful congregants or a megachurch with thousands of people attending weekly, in either case, today on Truth for Life, we'll find out that all of us are a part of something much bigger than we can imagine. Alistair Begg is teaching from chapter 16 of 1 Corinthians verses 19 through 24. In this letter here, as with all of Paul's letters, we would expect that since the Holy Spirit is the author of the letter, that it would come to a conclusion in just the way that it does.

Every word is important, and in his concluding statements, Paul is addressing these people in Corinth—folks who have been unruly, folks who have been passionate, people who have been divided for much of the time, and yet a church that has always been very exciting. And now he wraps it up with these concluding greetings. First of all, greetings from an external point of view.

In this case, the greetings are threefold. First of all, he extends the greetings of the churches in the province of Asia. That made sound of little import to us, just on a cursory glance, until we realize that until Paul had walked into the province of Asia, there were no churches in Asia at all. And when you go back to Acts chapter 19 and to verse 10, you discover him there in the heat of the afternoon, while most people are taking a siesta. He had taken the lecture hall of Tyrannus, and we're told by Luke that for two years he had discussions in the afternoon when people were off work for a few hours, so that the result was, all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord. If you go down to verse 26, in the account of the Ephesus riot, you discover people saying of this fellow Paul, he has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and practically the whole province of Asia.

It is a wonderful thing. Those who some time before had lived in paganism, had lived in confusion, had lived without God and without hope in the world, had been part and parcel of the pluralism of their day with religious interest, multiple deities, great interest in the afterlife, and accompanying great confusion out of that great host of people. The Lord Jesus had redeemed a company for himself, and these various churches were now sending their greetings to these believers in Corinth. And the simple greeting of these believers served to do two things.

Number one, to broaden their perspective. Paul was keen for them to understand that they were not it when it came to church. The Corinthians had a problem with regarding themselves as it. They thought there was never a church quite like them, that they were the epitome of what church life should be, and yet, of course, they were sadly confused and mistaken in that matter. And Paul, when he writes to them from the very beginning of his letter, writes to expand their horizons.

Verse 2 of the first chapter, to the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of the Lord our God. He says, I want you to know that you are part of something far bigger than yourselves. So he broadens their perspective, and he deepens their sense of partnership. There are churches other than yourselves, he says. We want you to know that something far bigger is going on.

You shouldn't feel alone, and you shouldn't ever regard yourselves as aloof. It's a good word for every church—an important reminder. There is a sense in which we ought to be grateful to God for all that he's doing here in this particular church. We don't want to take it for granted.

We don't want to treat it in a cursory fashion. But at the end of the day, we want to remind ourselves forcibly and frequently that we are part of something far bigger than ourselves in relationship to all that God is doing in Cleveland, in terms of what God is doing throughout the whole of the United States of America, and indeed in relationship to what God is doing throughout the world. So the greetings come from all the churches. The greetings also come—skipping down a phrase or two— from all the brothers. You'll notice in verse 20, all the brothers here send you greetings. Now, this clearly, I think, is a reference to the companions of Paul. All that we're able to say is that this sense of warm and significant partnership extended from the lives of those who were involved in ministry with Paul. We don't need to know everybody's name to realize the partnership that we enjoy with them in the gospel. The greetings from the churches, the greetings from all the brothers, and then particularly the greetings of this couple—a lovely couple. Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets in their house. Paul goes so far as to identify these individuals by name.

And it's not surprising. In Acts chapter 18, we're introduced to them. Paul is introduced to them in Acts 18 as well.

Turn to that for a moment so that you can set the history clear in your mind. When Paul left Athens, he moved on to Corinth. And when he arrived in Corinth, he met this couple, a Jew named Aquila who was a native of Pontus. They'd recently moved there from Italy. Now, we can only but assume that they regarded this as a significant dislocation in their lives, in the way that many of us do when the time comes to relocate. And so, they must have had conversations over dinner in the evening, well, we're going to leave Rome. Where do you think we should go?

Where do you think is possible? And they settled in Rome, in Corinth. After they'd been in Corinth for a while, they perhaps were still saying to themselves, I wonder what in the world we're doing here. Right up until the day this little Jewish evangelist arrived in town, and making known the fact to the people around him that he was able to earn his keep by being a tentmaker, presumably somebody said to him, Oh, the couple that you ought to meet are Priscilla and Aquila.

They make tents, and they love Jesus. And so it is that in Acts 18 we're told that Paul went to see them. And because he was a tentmaker, as they were, they had immediate point of contact, and he stayed, and he actually worked with them, and they made their home available to him. And for Priscilla and Aquila, their hospitality was matched by their maturity. And God had used the wonder of their understanding of the gospel in the lives of not a few people—not least of all Apollos, whose name is mentioned earlier in Corinthians. And in Acts 18 and 24, Apollos, a native of Alexandria, who was well versed in religious things, who knew about Jesus, who had a baptism of repentance but who just didn't have a full grasp of the truth, was welcomed into the home of Priscilla and Aquila, and there they taught him the Word of God cohesively, effectively, and encouragingly.

And so it was that their hospitality was matched by their maturity. And Paul says, Priscilla and Aquila send you greetings. Why do you think Priscilla and Aquila come out in the midst of all these general greetings? All the churches greet you. All the brothers greet you. And Priscilla and Aquila greet you.

Why? Why did he think of them? Because of the dramatic impact that they as a couple had made in his life. Thank God for the privilege of ministry and for the benefits of such ministry. These external greetings, then, are to be more than matched by the greetings that are going on internally. And at the end of verse 20, in a sentence, he calls the relationship of the believers in Corinth into a proximity to one another. He says, Greet one another with a holy kiss. Now, you see, the kiss was the common manner in which friends would say hello to one another. That was customary. If you think of it in European terms, you've got the right picture. If you remember, for example, back to the early pictures of Nikita Khrushchev kissing people when he was wearing that big furry hat, it wasn't what you call a mainline smooch.

It was more this and this. And when you see the French or the Italians greeting one another, they kiss on one cheek and the other. In actual fact, what you do is you kiss the air, if you know how to do it properly. They will always tell you, Kiss the air. And your cheek touches their cheek, and you kiss the air, and then you kiss the air.

Or actually, you kiss them flat on their foreheads—twice. It was the normal, customary expression of relationship with one another. And so, says Paul, I want you to greet one another in the common form, which was to kiss. And that reflected their culture. What marked them out as different from their culture was not a different way of kissing—namely, holy kissing. What made the common feature holy was the fact that they were holy. They were, as he's described them in the opening verses of 1 Corinthians, set apart, sanctified, separated from sin, separated to God, to one another, and therefore these people did the common thing in kissing, and it was holy because they themselves were part of the family of God. So it's not a special kind of kiss. It was just a customary greeting.

And indeed, a warm, affectionate handshake, an arm around the shoulder—give me five!—may express the exact same sentiment today. It ought not to be a stiff thing to be in the family of God. It ought not to be starchy to go to church. It ought not to be dull, it ought not to be boring, it ought not to be arm's length and removed. There's supposed to be a dimension of mutuality amongst the people of God that makes those who are outside the family of God say, You know what?

That's an incredible place! And unlike contemporary clubs, which have to do with having identified the fact that we paid enough money to get in, or we could jump far and fast enough to be included, or that our skill level was sufficient to be able to gather it into a small group, the family of God has black and white and rich and poor and fat and thin and wise and not-so-wise and so on, and it is utterly different from anything else in the whole of the universe. So the businessman walks into this, and he says, Man alive! There is something going on in there. They are greeting one another tangibly and significantly. The issue is not kissing, right? The issue is loving, the issue is caring, and the issue is letting people know that it's okay. Forget the first church of Christ Frigidaire. This is not a society. This is not a club. This is not a classroom. This is not a seminar.

This is a church. And when we come to church, and when we do church, we ought to know we've been, and we ought to know we've done it. All right. Thirdly, personal. Personal.

External greetings, internal greetings, personal greetings. Look at verse 21. I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand. Does that excite you?

That absolutely jazzes me. I can tell if I had been there, when this bit got read out, I had to jump right up the front of the church, or wherever it was being read, I would have grabbed the scroll right out of the fellow's hand, because I want to see, how does he write? I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand.

I want to see it. Now, what does this mean? Simply refers to the fact that the body of the letter has been written by somebody else—namely, a secretary. Probably a chap called Sostenus, if you look up the early verses of the book. And so he says to Sostenus, Give me the pen.

I'm going to finish it off myself. And he authenticates it by his own writing, his own hand, and his own signature. He's brought the greetings from over there. He's brought the greetings from the brothers. He's encouraged the greetings from one to another, and now he says, This is coming from me to you, if there's anything that you want.

If there's anything I can do, just call on me, and I'll send it along with love from me to you. That's what he's saying here. This is coming from me to you. The ending of his letter is significant. How does he end? Four words summarize his ending. He ends with a warning.

Verse 22, If anyone does not love the LORD, a curse be on him. Is this dramatic? What is he saying here? Why would he end with such a stirring warning? The answer is not because he hates but because he loves. He would not sound out the warning were it not for the fact that he cared for them. If he hated them, he'd just let them run aground on the shores of their rocky rebellion.

He loves them. And so he says, If you don't love the LORD, a curse be on you. This is not a reference to those who are seekers. This is not a reference to the unbeliever. This is not a reference to the person who's agnostic and says, I don't know who Jesus is.

I don't really know much about the Bible. And they come along, and they look at 1 Corinthians 16.22, and it says, Hey, if you don't love the LORD, a curse be on you. Say, goodness gracious, no wonder I haven't been going there. You should have heard what the fellow said. I came in, I tried to put my tie on, and everything in the chap said, If you don't love the LORD, a curse be on you. Is that what he's saying?

No. In Romans chapter 9, Paul says, I'm prepared to be accursed for the sake of those who don't know Christ. In 1 Corinthians chapter 9, he says, I make it my aim to win as many as possible.

I become Greek to the Greek, I become Jewish to the Jew, I become smart to the smart and dumb to the dumb, so that by all means I might win some. So what is he saying here? Let me tell you who he's referring to. He is referring to the issue of religious humbug. He is referring to the matter of religious hypocrisy. He is referring to the characters who were all through Corinth, who had a form of godliness and denied its power, who said that they had a life in Christ, but their lifestyle never matched it.

They were false professors. Indeed, in 1 Corinthians 12 and verse 3 he reminds his readers, he says, nobody possessed of the Spirit of God can say, Jesus, be cursed. It's a strange thing to even mention, unless there were those going around Corinth who were claiming to know Jesus and yet at the same time thought that they could call down cursings on him. Paul says, You think you can do that?

Let me tell you. Jesus said, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. The commandments of the Lord Jesus are clear. If you do not keep his commandments, you deny the fact of his love. Don't tell me about the fact that you're in Christ and there's no evidence of it.

The ground is his work. The evidence of it is your continuance. And he says, If anyone does not show the evidence of an obedient life to walking with Christ, then there will be a curse that comes on him. And so he fires a warning out.

There's nothing more pernicious than the kind of people who take advantage of the profession of religion for the sake of their own corrupt desires. He also reminds them that he's waiting, and they're waiting. One in twenty-five verses in the New Testament are about the coming of Jesus.

And you see the juxtaposition. I'm giving you this warning, and remember, we're waiting. He may come at any time.

He'll come as a thief in the night. Don't be like the five foolish virgin who had no oil left in their lamps. Be like the wise whose lamps were trimmed and ready. The warning sounds out in light of the waiting.

Can I warn you this morning, if you are a false professor, give up your false profession and lay hold upon Jesus. Don't be satisfied with mere attendance at a church, merely having your name upon a roll, merely going through this Sunday by Sunday. Say, Today, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make sure unreservedly that I have a repentant heart before Christ, that I cry out to him for mercy and for grace and for faith and for forgiveness.

I want to heed the warning. I want to be found waiting. I want to be under the blessing— that's the third word, blessing—the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you, the same way that he began.

Wonderful framework. 1 Corinthians 1 verse 3, grace to you. 1 Corinthians 16 23, grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. There is no other single word in Christian vocabulary that most fully and adequately expresses what God has done and will do for his people in Jesus. It's grace at the beginning, grace in the middle, and grace at the end—grace that is greater than all my sin. I, Paul, send you this personal greeting, warning, waiting, blessing, and loving.

Look at verse 24. Loving. My love to you all in Christ Jesus, to all of you, all of you, the ones that have bugged me, the ones that have disappointed me, the ones that have encouraged me, the ones that have blessed me, the ones that I've had to reprove and rebuke who were fighting at the communion table, those who were setting up little parties and dividing the church.

He said, I want you to know the good, the bad, and the ugly. The church is church. I send my love to all of you in Jesus Christ. The letter ends on a tender note, not with a clashing of a symbol, not with a great swelling fortissimo, but with an almost piccolo-like melody speaking of the love of the Lord Jesus. His letter has been strong.

It's been clear. The source of his love is Jesus. The framework of his love is Jesus. Indeed, the most favorite phrase of Paul in all his writings is here in this last verse, and with it he finishes. You would expect him to finish with his favorite phrase, and he does, In Christ Jesus.

That was the wonder of it for him. If any man or woman be in Christ Jesus, they are a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. We are either in Christ or we are not in Christ.

In the same way as we are either married or we are unmarried, if you do not know whether you are or you're not, then you're in a grave predicament. And the same is true spiritually. I send my love, he says, to all of you in Christ Jesus. There's no amen in the original. There's an amen in here.

It fits, of course. But the earliest manuscripts do not end with amen. They end with Jesus.

And so they should. For he is, after all, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. I have labored to preach to you the Word of God through these sixteen chapters of 1 Corinthians, with the express purpose that unbelieving people may become committed followers of Jesus Christ. I end as I began, calling those who do not believe, to believe, and hearing the call of God upon the lives of those of us who do believe to committed, faithful service. Thanks be to God for his Word. With the final message in our study of 1 Corinthians chapter 16, you're listening to Alistair Begg.

This is Truth for Life. Alistair ended today's message with a call to believe and to serve. And if you'd like to know more about who Jesus is, what it means to follow him, I want to encourage you to watch a short video called The Story.

You can find it at truthforlife.org slash thestory. The story of Jesus includes many fascinating people. Some of them claimed to be saints and proved to be scoundrels. Some were scoundrels who were transformed into saints. In the book we're recommending to our listeners titled Saints and Scoundrels in the Story of Jesus, the author Nancy Guthrie provides an up-close look at what shaped and motivated some of these well-known people. Nancy points out that it's one thing to read about people like the Pharisees or their chief priest Caiaphas, for example, but she challenges us to consider how we may actually share some of their attributes. This is a book that will challenge you to do some self-analysis, but you'll also be greatly encouraged as you learn just how much Jesus forgives our failures and our shortcomings. Request the book Saints and Scoundrels when you give a donation at truthforlife.org slash donate. I'm Bob Lapeen, thanks for listening. Tomorrow we'll hear how Jesus often focuses on fixing things that some of us don't even realize are broken. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.