1957. The Drunkards at Corinth. The Southern Presbyterian Journal. 3–4. Jan 30
The Drunkards at Corinth
Yesterday I conducted the communion service. In the sermon I
referred to the irreverent participants at Corinth who came to the Lord's table
drunk. The Corinthians were pretty wicked. There was also fornication among them
such as is not so much as named among the Gentiles.
Of course people today still come to the Lord's Supper thoughtlessly
and irreverently. This too is sin. But by and large our sins are not so gross as
those of the early Corinthians. When has any one of us seen a drunk at the Lord's
table? Fornicators? Well, we like to believe the best.
And yet, is all this respectability pure gain? Or does the absence
of wicked people in the church indicate that the church is failing to reach the
wicked people?
There are today, as well as in the first century, victims of
gross immorality. Yesterday I administered a respectable communion service. This
morning I learned of a teenage girl who for five years had been forced into incest
both by her brother and her father. Our respectability therefore has not been gained
by a higher level of morality in the whole community, but rather by a failure to
reach these degraded people.
If we could convert a group of modern Corinthians, no doubt our
churches would be troubled by disciplinary problems. Respectable people, both in
the church and out of the church, would be scandalized. And yet, such disorder would
not be all loss, would it?
— G.H.C.
No comments:
Post a Comment