1 Corinthians 16

Today’s Passage: 1 Corinthians 16

The last chapter of this great letter is about money, travel arrangements, and people whose names you have never heard before. That is not a letdown. That is the landing. Paul has just carried the Corinthians up to the highest ground in all his writings, the empty tomb, the last trumpet, the perishable clothed with the imperishable, death swallowed up in victory, and now he sets his pen down and tells them to put something aside on the first day of every week so that the poor believers in Jerusalem will have bread. He tells them where he is going and when, and why he is staying on in Ephesus a while longer. He asks them to receive young Timothy kindly and not to look down on him. He explains that Apollos was not willing to come just now. He fires off five short commands like hammer blows, and then names a household, a few travelers, a married couple with a church in their living room. He takes the pen from his secretary and signs the thing in his own large handwriting. He speaks one solemn word about anyone who does not love the Lord, prays an old Aramaic prayer for Jesus to come, and closes with grace and love. Fifteen chapters of glory, and then a page of ordinary Christian life. That is exactly where glory is supposed to go.

As you read, hold this: After fifteen chapters of glory the letter comes to rest in a collection box and a list of names, because the risen Christ makes His people alert, strong, generous, and doing everything in love while they wait for Him.

1 Corinthians 16:1–4 (BSB)

¹ Now about the collection for the saints, you are to do as I directed the churches of Galatia: ² On the first day of every week, each of you should set aside a portion of his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will be needed. ³ Then, on my arrival, I will send letters with those you recommend to carry your gift to Jerusalem. ⁴ And if it is advisable for me to go also, they can travel with me.

Notice what the resurrection produces. One chapter ago the trumpet was sounding and the dead were being raised imperishable, and the very next thing Paul says is, put a little aside each week for the poor. There is no seam between those two things in his mind. The glory is what funds the giving. And see how ordinary he makes it. Not a dramatic appeal, not an emotional evening with the offering plate passed twice while somebody pleads. Just this: on the first day of every week, each of you, a portion of your income, set aside, saved up. Every word of it is quiet and practical. It happens on the first day of the week, the day the tomb was found empty, the day these believers gathered, so that the rhythm of giving is tied to the rhythm of the resurrection. It is each of you, so that the widow with almost nothing and the merchant with a warehouse both have a share in it. It is proportioned to income, so that nobody is crushed and nobody is let off. And it is saved up ahead of time, so that when the apostle finally walks through the door there is no scramble, no embarrassed collection taken up on the spot, no giving squeezed out of people by the pressure of a moment. Planned generosity is a spiritual discipline, and it is one of the humblest and most useful there is. Money is not a small subject in Scripture, because money is a fair measure of what a heart actually loves. Paul is teaching this church, which had argued about wisdom and status and gifts for fifteen chapters, to open its hands toward believers a thousand miles away whom it would never meet. Elsewhere he tells us what the Lord looks for in it.

"Each one should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not out of regret or compulsion. For God loves a cheerful giver." 2 Corinthians 9:7 (BSB)

1 Corinthians 16:5–9 (BSB)

⁵ After I go through Macedonia, however, I will come to you; for I will be going through Macedonia. ⁶ Perhaps I will stay with you awhile, or even spend the winter, so that you can help me on my journey, wherever I go. ⁷ For I do not want to see you now only in passing; I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. ⁸ But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, ⁹ because a great door for effective work has opened to me, even though many oppose me.

Here is an apostle making plans, and making them humbly. He has a route in mind, up through Macedonia and then down to Corinth, perhaps a whole winter with them, and he wants it to be a real visit and not a wave from the road. Then he adds four small words that ought to be stitched into every calendar we keep: “if the Lord permits.” He plans, and he holds the plan loosely, because the Lord of the plan is not himself. But the sentence that shines here is the reason he is staying put in Ephesus. A great door (θύρα) thura, pronounced THOO-rah. Strong's G2374, door, an opened opportunity. The Greek word here is the plain, everyday word for a thura, the door of a house or a courtyard or a shop, the thing you push open to go in. Paul had a habit of using it for opportunity, and it is a wonderfully humble picture. A door is not something you manufacture. You do not argue a door into existence or work hard enough to deserve one. Someone on the other side opens it, and your part is simply to walk through while it stands open. All through his letters he asks people to pray that God would open a door for the word, and he speaks of doors opened to him in one city and another, which means he understood every genuine opportunity for the gospel as a gift handed to him rather than a prize he had won. That takes the strain out of a great deal of Christian anxiety. We are not responsible for creating openings; we are responsible for noticing them and going in. And notice that this door is called great, and that it stands open in the very place where the most people are set against him. Watch for the doors God sets open in front of you. They will rarely be the easy ones, and they will almost never stay open forever. has opened for effective work, and many oppose him, and he treats those two facts as one reason rather than two. We would have written it the other way around. A great door has opened, but there is fierce opposition, and so perhaps I had better look for a quieter field. Paul says: a great door has opened, even though many oppose me, and therefore I am staying. He had learned that opposition is very often the shadow cast by an open door. Where nothing eternal is happening, nobody bothers to fight you.

1 Corinthians 16:10–12 (BSB)

¹⁰ If Timothy comes, see to it that he has nothing to fear while he is with you, for he is doing the work of the Lord, just as I am. ¹¹ No one, then, should treat him with contempt. Send him on his way in peace so that he can return to me, for I am expecting him along with the brothers. ¹² Now about our brother Apollos: I strongly urged him to go to you with the brothers. He was not at all inclined to go now, but he will go when he has the opportunity.

There is a great deal of pastoral tenderness packed into these three verses. Timothy was young, and by every hint we have he was not a bold man by temperament. He is being sent into a congregation that had a real appetite for measuring its teachers against one another, and Paul knows perfectly well what a clever, quarrelsome church can do to a sensitive young servant. So he writes ahead: see to it that he has nothing to fear among you. Do not let anyone look down on him. Send him off in peace. Consider how far that is from the tone of chapter one, where these same people were lining up behind their favorite speakers and sorting them by polish. Paul will not have his young colleague graded. The measure he gives them is simply this, that Timothy “is doing the work of the Lord, just as I am,” which flattens every ranking the Corinthians had built. And then Apollos, who was the very man some of them had made their party banner. Notice how easy Paul is about him. He calls him “our brother,” says he strongly urged him to come, and reports without a trace of injured pride that Apollos was not at all inclined to go just now. No maneuvering, no wounded dignity, no hint that a rival is being kept away. Two men whose names had been used as weapons against each other, and here they are, brothers with different judgments about a travel date, and the church is simply told the truth. That is what the cross does to ministry. It makes it possible for a man to be secure enough to say plainly that his colleague disagreed with him and thought no more about it.

1 Corinthians 16:13–14 (BSB)

¹³ Be on the alert. Stand firm in the faith. Be men of courage. Be strong. ¹⁴ Do everything in love.

Five commands, one after another, with no explanation attached to any of them. After sixteen chapters of careful argument Paul simply plants his feet and gives orders, and every one of them lands like a hammer. Be on the alert, because a sleeping church is robbed in the night and never hears a thing. Stand firm in the faith, and mark that he does not say stand firm in your convictions or your opinions but in the faith, the deposit of truth handed down, Christ crucified and Christ risen, which was never yours to renegotiate. Be men of courage (ἀνδρίζομαι) andrizomai, pronounced an-DRID-zoh-my. Strong's G407, to act like a man, to be courageous. The verb Paul uses is andrizomai, built straight off the word for a man, and the old English versions rendered it “quit you like men.” It is a word out of the soldier’s world and the athlete’s, the word you would shout at troops before a line held or broke, and it carries the sense of putting away childishness and cowardice and standing up to what must be faced. This is the only place in the whole New Testament it appears, which gives it a certain weight, and it is worth saying plainly what it does and does not mean. It is not a call for the men of the church to be manly while the women look on. Paul is writing to the whole congregation, and the word had long since widened into a summons for anyone with a heart in them to be brave. The old Greek translation of the Old Testament uses it again and again for what God said to Joshua at the edge of the promised land, “be strong and courageous,” and for the charge David laid on Solomon before the building of the temple. So it comes to us carrying the smell of frontier and battlefield and unfinished work. Grow up, it says. Take your place. The faith you have received will ask more of you than comfort can supply, and God does not hand out courage to people who never intended to need any. , for the Christian life is not for the timid and never has been. Be strong, which in the Greek is not an order to manufacture strength out of your own thin supply but a call to be strengthened, to let another’s power hold you up. Four soldierly words, and any regiment in the empire might have shouted them. And then, before a single one of them can curdle into swagger, comes the fifth: do everything in love. Everything. The alertness, the standing, the courage, the strength, all of it done in love or none of it done at all. Here is chapter thirteen, set as a governor on the whole machine. A church can be watchful and immovable and brave and strong and still be a clanging cymbal. Paul will not let these people take one step of courage that is not a step of love.

1 Corinthians 16:15–18 (BSB)

¹⁵ You know that Stephanas and his household were the first converts in Achaia, and they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints. Now I urge you, brothers, ¹⁶ to submit to such as these, and to every fellow worker and laborer. ¹⁷ I am glad that Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus have arrived, because they have supplied what was lacking from you. ¹⁸ For they refreshed my spirit and yours as well. Show your appreciation, therefore, to such men.

Now the letter that began with factions gives us its answer to factions, and the answer is a list of names. Stephanas and his household were the first converts (ἀπαρχή) aparchē, pronounced ah-par-KHAY. Strong's G536, firstfruits, the first sheaf that pledges the whole harvest. The word Paul reaches for is aparchē, the firstfruits, and it comes straight out of the harvest laws of Israel. When the barley began to ripen, the first sheaf was cut and brought to the LORD before a single loaf was baked for the family, and that one small offering did two things at once. It gave God the first and best rather than the leftovers, and it stood as a promise that the whole field was coming in behind it. So when Paul calls the household of Stephanas the firstfruits of Achaia, he is not merely noting a date on a calendar. He is saying that this ordinary family was the first sheaf of a Greek harvest God had already determined to gather, the pledge of every believer in Corinth who came after them, and of the church across that province still standing today. It is the same word he used one chapter earlier for the risen Christ Himself, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep, the first sheaf of the great resurrection harvest. Hold those two together and the picture is complete. Christ is the firstfruits of the dead; a nameless household in Corinth is the firstfruits of a province; and every quiet believer who serves the saints without applause is somewhere in that same field, gathered by the same God, waiting for the same morning. in all of Achaia, the first sheaves off that whole Greek harvest field, and what have they done with the honor of being first? They have devoted themselves to the service of the saints. That is the sentence to sit with. They did not use their seniority to build a following. They spent it on the ordinary work of feeding, housing, carrying, visiting, and cleaning up after the people of God. And to such people, Paul says, submit. There is the whole Corinthian disease taken out at the root. This church wanted to attach itself to eloquence and status and spiritual display; Paul tells them to put themselves under the people who serve. Not the impressive ones. The laboring ones, and, he adds, “every fellow worker and laborer,” which throws the door open past the famous names to everyone quietly wearing themselves out for Christ in that town. Then three men are named, Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus, who had made the long crossing to Ephesus, probably carrying the very letter of questions Paul has been answering all this time. They refreshed his spirit, he says, and yours as well. Two of those three names are the sort a slave or a freedman would carry, which means the men who refreshed an apostle’s heart may have been nobody at all by Corinthian reckoning. Show your appreciation to such men. The world will not, so the church must.

1 Corinthians 16:19–20 (BSB)

¹⁹ The churches in the province of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Prisca greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets at their house. ²⁰ All the brothers here send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss.

Feel the warmth in this. Churches across a whole province, people the Corinthians had never met, send their greetings to a congregation whose troubles filled sixteen chapters. That is the family Christ has made, wider than any one town and stronger than any one town’s failures. Then two friends by name. Aquila and Prisca had lived in Corinth themselves; Paul had worked alongside them at the tentmaker’s bench with his own hands, and they had gone on with him to Ephesus, where a church now met in their house. Not a building, a house. Somebody’s front room with the furniture pushed back, bread on the table, the singing spilling out into the street. That is where the church of God lived in the first century, in the homes of ordinary tradespeople who opened their doors. And then the greeting itself, a holy kiss, the affectionate greeting families gave each other in that world, and here handed across every line the ancient city cared about, slave and free, Jew and Greek, wealthy and poor, all greeting one another as kin. Remember what this church had been doing to one another. Suing each other in the courts, shaming the poor at the Lord’s Supper, dividing over teachers. And Paul’s last practical word to them is: greet one another. Get close enough to touch. There is no such thing as a Christian who keeps the family at arm’s length.

1 Corinthians 16:21–24 (BSB)

²¹ This greeting is in my own hand—Paul. ²² If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be under a curse. Come, O Lord! ²³ The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. ²⁴ My love be with all of you in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Here he takes the pen. Up to this point a secretary has been writing at his dictation, and now the old apostle signs off in his own hand so they will know past all doubt that this letter is truly his. And what does he write with his own fingers? First a solemn line, then a prayer, then grace and love. The solemn line has to be read carefully, and it must not be softened and must not be made cruel. Paul does not say, if anyone fails, or falls, or is weak, or has argued with me for sixteen chapters. He has just spent this whole letter dealing with the failures of people he calls beloved brothers, and he never once threatens them with this. He says: if anyone does not love the Lord. That is a different matter altogether. It is possible to sit inside a church for years, to know the vocabulary and the seating and the songs, and to have no love for Jesus Christ at all, and Paul says plainly that such a person is under a curse, set apart for judgment, standing outside of life. He does not say it with relish. He says it the way a physician names a fatal thing, because to leave it unsaid would be the unkindness. And then, in the same breath, the whole letter turns and looks up and cries out, Come, O Lord! (μαρὰν ἀθά) maran atha, pronounced MAH-ran ah-THAH. Strong's G3134, Aramaic: our Lord, come. Behind the English “Come, O Lord!” stands a word Paul did not translate. He wrote marana tha, and it is not Greek at all; it is Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke in Galilee, dropped untranslated into a letter addressed to Greeks who very likely did not know a word of it. That tells us something remarkable. This little cry had already become common property among the churches, passed along from the first Aramaic-speaking believers in Jerusalem to congregations across the empire and kept in its original sound, the way a family keeps a phrase from the grandparents’ tongue. It is very likely the oldest recorded prayer of the Christian church, older than any hymn we possess, older than the Gospels themselves in written form. Read one way it says our Lord, come; read another it says our Lord has come; and the beauty of it is that the church has always meant both. He has come, in a manger and on a cross and out of a tomb. He is coming, on the day of the last trumpet. Between those two comings this two-word prayer has been on believing lips for two thousand years, in every language and every century, and it has never yet been answered. It will be. Learn to pray it. It is the shortest and truest summary of what a Christian is: someone who loves the Lord and wants Him here. Elsewhere the Scriptures give us the Lord’s own answer to that longing.

"He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!" Revelation 22:20 (BSB)

And then the last two lines, and they are the letter in miniature. “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.” Grace, always grace, the thing this church had done nothing to deserve and could not have earned on its best day. And then, from the man who had written them the most correcting letter in the New Testament, who had rebuked their pride and their lawsuits and their immorality and their table manners and their showing off, the final words are these: “My love be with all of you in Christ Jesus.” All of you. Not the sound party, not the ones who took his side. All of them. He had told them to do everything in love three paragraphs earlier, and he closes by doing it himself.