| “For in him you have been enriched in every way…” |
| —1 Corinthians 1:5 |
I can still remember the delightful aroma of freshly baked bread coming out of the oven when I was a small child. There is no comparable mouth-watering scent quite that like of freshly baked bread. I can also remember my mother talking about how flour had changed in her lifetime.
Born in 1904, for a very short time she had grown up with a mother, and later, for the rest of her formative years, a step-mother when her mother died in childbirth. She once told me, as she kneaded the dough for a loaf of bread, how the flour used to require multiple siftings in order to achieve the right texture for baking bread. She explained what a “miracle” it was when so-called “enriched flour” made it onto the shelves.
My mother was 42 years old when she and my 40-year-old father adopted me. They had been married for nearly 16 years when I came along. Prior to my adoption, both parents had worked. My mother was a bookkeeping clerk in an office. My dad was a carpenter and later a salesman. Plus, my dad had served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II.
When I reached the age of twelve, entered junior high school, and no longer came home from school for lunch each day, my mom went back to work for the same company she had left twelve years before. Bread baking stopped in our house. It was far easier to purchase bread at the grocery store. But, I still remember the magnificent results of that enriched flour and other necessary ingredients being turned into delicious bread.
In his first letter to the new Christians gathered in the church at Corinth, the Apostle Paul writes to them about the enriching power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Please take note of Paul’s words, as recorded in 1 Corinthians 1:4-5:
I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge…
He tells these newborn babes in Christ—all of whom were struggling mightily to shake off the shackles of intense sin because of the decadence of the culture in which they lived—that the very grace of God given to them in Christ has enriched them in every way. Two marks of that enrichment were the change in their manner of speaking and in the knowledge they had acquired about the spiritual direction of their lives.
Today in the United States of America, we live in an ever-increasingly coarse culture. We seldom can go anywhere without hearing foul language used in common conversation by both men and women, even children. People think nothing of using the most base words to describe the simple happenings in their lives.
Just for curiosity sake, I once sat in a large shopping mall and observed over a 30-minute period the number of times I heard the Lord’s name taken in vain, the use of foul and coarse language, and noted the gender of those using such words. To my shock, at least in that setting—which likely had more women present than men—the women far outnumbered the men in their use of curse words and coarse language. Some of the foulest words I had ever heard spoken were dropped without a second thought in a setting filled with other people and, especially, with children. I was appalled, but not surprised.
Here in the United States, we have no quarter on bad language. Cultural historians writing about the city of Corinth in the days of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry and the next few decades that followed, tell of a city so foul in its language that even the hardened Roman soldiers were amazed and embarrassed.
One centurion writing to his wife in Rome told of how shocked he was at the foul words he heard in the marketplace. He told his wife that he would have to place “cloth in your ears” if she were to walk with him through the streets in the center of Corinth. So, it is amazing that one of the great benefits that Paul notes about the new Christians in Corinth is that they had a change in language. He also notes their increase in knowledge about God, about the spiritual pathway of their lives, about the great sacrifice that Christ had made to cover their sins, and about the new life God had given them through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
I don’t know about you, but I long for an even greater spiritual enrichment in my own life. I have walked with God since I was nine years old. Over the course of the intervening 66 years, I have often failed to faithfully follow in Christ’s footsteps. But, more and more I am longing for an increase in closeness to Him and to His written Word. I eagerly consider myself as a recipient of Paul’s letter and hope against hope that I might become worthy to receive such a letter. Yes, imagine the joy to read the words in the verses above for the first time.
As we begin a new day, may we read Paul’s words and long for such a declaration in our own lives. May we desire God to so enrich our lives that someone who loves us will be moved to thank God for us. And, may we strive to allow the Holy Spirit to keep making us more and more like Jesus—that we might come into the fullness of His glorious Presence with hearts and minds focused on the pathway He has laid out before us through the enabling of the Holy Spirit.
Based on a blog originally posted on Monday, March 13, 2017
