Enriched in Jesus Christ (2)
“For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speech and in all your knowledge—because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you.” 1 Corinthians 1:5-6
They had been enriched in “every way”. Paul then illustrates what he means by isolating speech and knowledge and, of course, what is true of the Corinthians is true of all who are in Jesus Christ.
It’s fashionably wise and spiritual to dismiss speech and knowledge as mere surface issues. Christ didn’t take such an approach and neither did Paul. Christ said his words were spirit and truth and he said that knowing the one true God and his Son, Jesus Christ, was eternal life. Paul knew the dangers of knowledge and the vanity of words but the cure for such abuse and vanity is not ignorance and speechlessness. It isn't wise to be wiser or more spirituall than God. In the passage above he says Christ enriches our speech.
We’re enriched in Christ in our speech. When his influence in us has its way cheap and sleazy talk leaves the building. Our stories are cleaner, truer and funnier (in part because they’re cleaner); they carry people’s minds down better avenues and generate pleasure and joy without being tasteless and crude. Our life stories are enriched because our master Story is far and away the best, the most enthralling, the most adventurous, the most mystifying and the most hopeful of all master stories. The Story is cosmic as well as personal; it affects how we see the darkest corridors of space and the way we look at little children; it gives us a sense of mission and destiny as it cultivates strength and calls us to moral heroism.
In Jesus Christ we’re enriched because we have something to talk about that dwarfs all the social programmes (even good social programmes) while it careers us headlong into rich social engagement and change, as agents of change for Jesus’ sake. In Jesus Christ we have something to say to a chattering Western world that can make its voice heard in far-flung galaxies but has nothing worth saying!
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
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