God’s Word for You
1 Corinthians 3:21-23 All things belong to you
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, December 6, 2022
21 So then, no one should boast about men!
For all things belong to you:
22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas,
or the world or life or death,
or things in the present or things in the future.
All these things belong to you,
23 and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.
Paul is wrapping up his argument about factions, and he does it in a unique and positive way. Why boast about having this or that? You are the people of God, so everything is yours! Does this mean that I have freedom to do anything, since everything is mine? No, because not everything pleases God. So in one sense, there is no human law that can bind me, but at the same time, every law binds me, and more, for God’s will binds me at the same time that God sets me perfectly free.
We are free from any obedience that anyone might claim leads to salvation, for Christ has freely, fully, and completely won salvation and has given it to us as a gift through faith.
Why, then, would we want to do anything at all under the law? We must remove ourselves from the idea of obedience to understand our relationship to God’s law. God’s holy Son ventured into our world, the world that was created for us but was ruined by our sin. This world is fit only to be destroyed because of us. He came in order to rescue us and to save us. He became one of us, and he was put to death to atone for our sin. This he did because we could never atone for a single sin, not with oceans of blood spilled, not though all the animals in the world were put to death and mountains of salt were thrown onto the pile. Christ came and humbled himself to nothingness, to a criminal’s death, and accomplished everything in our place. This act, not any accident but is the intended result of the Son of God’s entrance into this world, this act brought us to God’s side. We are not his slaves but his children on account of Christ. And he has given to his children the most wonderful promises: the end of death, the resurrection from the dead, the ascension into heaven, a place there in Paradise with him forever! These are the promises God has made to his flock, his children.
All of this makes a change in the attitude and the emotions of sinful man. We feared him, we cowered from him. Some have even claimed to have hated God because of his unrelenting wrath. But all of this terror and fear is suddenly ended with the rising of the New Man from the dead Adam. Like the sun coming out on a spring day, the glory of our forgiving God puts an end to the noise of his thunderous wrath, and our hearts are filled with peace, gratefulness, happiness, joy, and thanks.
It is there in the happy thanks of the forgiven Christian that the idea of wanting to walk according to God’s will and God’s way enters our hearts. His commands become a garden to be appreciated for their beauty, their perfection, their correctness. Each commandment protects God’s glory and man’s vulnerability. Each one lifts up human relationships with other human beings and with God himself. By giving us faith, God hands us the key to the delightful garden of his will, and there we do not want to hide because we fear him, but live and thrive because we love him.
This is why we turn to his Word and read in his Law what his will is, and although free from the necessity of obedience, we walk according to his will out of love and thanks. He demands that we have no other gods, and in our faith and thanks we say, what other god would ever take our eyes from you? He demands that we never use his name in vain, and in our faith and thanks we use his name to pray, praise and give thanks to him. This is the life of the Christian who gives thanks to God. But we also serve and love one another, and for this reason we are subject to everyone, serving them with our words, our thoughts, our wealth, and even our health if necessary, so that by all possible means we might save some (1 Corinthians 9:22). Pray for one another.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.