The Bible Study Podcast, episode 46. This is the fifth episode in a series on what the church is and what it's called to be. This episode will focus on love.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen. As we started this series on what the church is and what it's called to be, I'm hoping more than a few of you anticipated that they would be this particular episode about the church being loving, because I'm hoping this is a theme that you are familiar with,

and yet I think it still bears repeating in terms of what the Bible is calling the church to be.

And we're going to start this episode with some very familiar verses about love.

If you're married, you may have had 1 Corinthians 13 read at your wedding.

It's certainly one of the most common verses or chapters of the Bible to be read at a wedding.

The interesting thing, though, is that this chapter was not written with that intent.

Although it certainly works well, as it is a chapter that tells us about love,

the focus of this chapter is the church

and how the church is dealing first of all with one another inside the church. And if you look

at 1 Corinthians 12 and 1 Corinthians 14, which are the bookends around this particular chapter about love, you'll see that

they have to do with spiritual gifts and with the sense of unity of the church, especially chapter

12, which has that great illustration about the body of Christ. It says this about the body of

Christ. Now the body is not made up of one part, but of many. If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, it would not for this reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body. It would not for this reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye,

where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact, God arranged the parts of the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. The eye cannot say to the hand, I do not need you, and the head cannot say to the feet, I do not need you. On the contrary, those parts of the body seem weaker are indispensable,

and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor.

What's going on, apparently, in the church in Corinth that the book of Corinthians,

first and second, would be written to, is they're having some problems

in the church. And we learn about the problems based on what Paul is telling us. One of the things

that they're having a problem with is they're telling each other literally that because you don't

have the same gifts that I do, because you have a different role in the church than I do, a different position, a different ministry, you are less of a Christian than I am. You are somehow less. This is the, I cannot say to the hand, I do not need you. Just because you have a different function doesn't mean that

one of you is more important than the other. And this theme here over these three chapters,

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