Bible Study Be a Man!

[Tenchi]

1 Corinthians 16:13
13 Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
​

I attend a German Baptist church (not German myself, though) and there is among the congregants - especially the older ones - an attitude that resonates strongly with what Paul the apostle wrote in the quotation above. Many of the older congregants immigrated from Germany during, or just after, the second World War. They and their parents had very much the thinking of pioneers, forging a new life in a foreign country. Self-reliance, as you'd expect, was a vital part of their basic set of life principles. This attitude remains, along with staunch practicality and prudence in all things, creating a very tough-minded, "I will do it!" view of living. There is much to be admired in this pioneer spirit and thinking but I have noticed that it tends to blind those who've settled into it to important spiritual truth. The above Bible quotation is a good case in point.

On its face, what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 16:13 seems to be very much in the vein of "God helps those who help themselves." Paul's short, rapid-fire injunctions sound just like the sort of thing you'd hear from an army sergeant barking at new recruits: "Pay attention! Stand up straight! Be a man! Toughen up!" A closer look at what Paul wrote reveals a different reading of his words, however.


"Be alert"

"For what?" seems to be a reasonable question. It finds an answer, not in the immediate context of the verse, but in what the apostle Peter wrote:

1 Peter 5:8
8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Do lions typically prey upon strong and dangerous animals? No, their habit is to locate the vulnerable animal – one that is alone, young, old, weak, or sick - and attack it. This is the devil's strategy, too. He assaults the spiritually-vulnerable person, the person isolated from the love and support of fellow believers, the person weakened by disease, tragedy and pain, the person thoroughly caught in sin, the person dabbling foolishly in the occult, the person ignorant of the spiritual battle in which they stand every day (Ephesians 6:12), and goes for their jugular.

The devil sees us far more clearly than we often see ourselves, attacking us in the very areas of our lives where we feel the least vulnerable and so do not guard as carefully as we should. In light of this, Paul issues a general command to be alert, not just to the weak and vulnerable, but to the strong, as well.

God does not allow the devil to attack us just as he likes. Satan had to ask God for permission to test Job and to "sift Peter like wheat" (Job 2:3-6; Luke 22:31). We can trust that when such permission is given and the devil takes a run at us, God has a good purpose in it (Romans 8:28-29). Often, He's just showing us, in the tempest of the devil's aggression, where we're really at spiritually. In the pressure cooker of spiritual battle, we see our weaknesses most clearly, turning to God in fuller dependence, as a result. And there's nothing like a few “scratches” and "bite marks" from the "devouring lion" to wake us up and motivate us to remain alert!

The opposite of being alert is being distracted, tuned-out, or asleep. In commanding us to be alert, Paul is necessarily commanding us not to be these things. One can't be alert and distracted/asleep at the same time, right?

Lions will draw the attention of a protective mother elephant away from its newborn baby, distracting the mother elephant, while another group of lions sneak in to kill the baby. In our modern world, this tactic of distraction is working massively well for the devil. Believers are distracted by a myriad of things: t.v., movies, online gaming, sports, hobbies, music, food, sex, luxury, travel and so on. In every direction a person turns today, something is clamoring for their attention. And as we allow ourselves to be distracted by these clamoring things and neglect to keep watch, a variety of fleshly, worldly and even demonic preoccupations creep into our lives, eroding our walk with God, weakening our spiritual health, and making us "easy meat" for the devil.

What's distracting you as a disciple of Christ? What turns your eyes away from him, dulling your awareness of the approach of the evil one? Are you so confident that you’re careless, certain you are impervious to moral compromise or demonic attack and so aren’t being vigilant? "Be alert!"


"Stand firm in the faith"

This command from the apostle Paul implies that a believer will encounter pressures upon them such that they could be moved from their confidence in God and His promises. Certainly, this was the case for the Christians to whom Paul first wrote these words. Persecution of born-again believers was, at times, fierce and terrible within the Roman Empire; to be a member of the Early Church was often to risk death. Against such severe pressure, "standing firm" was an extremely serious and crucial thing.

Upon what is the believer to stand, exactly? What is supposed to be the power source for such resolute faith? Sheer will-power? Personal grit? Steely determination? Did Paul think the believers to whom he wrote should "stand firm in the faith" upon the ground of their own human capacities to do so? Is Paul's injunction above a "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" sort of thing?

No, Christian faith rests upon facts and experience, not mere force of will.

Hebrews 11:6
6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

Here are at least two facts upon which a Christian's faith ought to rest:

- God exists (…believe that He is…).
- God blesses those who seek Him (…He is a rewarder…).

Is the person coming to God supposed to believe these things blindly? No. Both natural theology (Romans 1:19-20) and the special revelation of God in Christ and Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16-17) give the Christian great cause to believe that God exists and that He intends good things for His children.

2 Timothy 1:12
12 For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.

In this verse, Paul lays out the process of, or steps to, faith:

Knowledge (I know whom I’ve believed)>firm conviction (I am convinced)>action (I have entrusted to Him).

Paul did not blindly believe, trusting in God, in Christ, in a vacuum of good reason to do so. It was knowledge that led him to believe, leading in turn to behavior that manifested his belief.

Romans 10:17
17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

Here, Paul explained that faith is the result of "hearing." Hearing what? The truth of the Gospel (Romans 10:9-14). Knowledge of the facts of the faith, of the Gospel in particular, were essential to Christian faith.

Experience, too, has an important role to play in a Christian "standing firm in the faith." At the heart of the Christian faith is not only spiritual knowledge, spiritual facts, but a Person who can be known through direct, personal experience: God. Christian believers are invited into fellowship - intimate communion - with God, not into a blind, make-yourself-believe, exercise of faith.

1 Corinthians 1:9
9 God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

2 Corinthians 13:14
14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

1 John 1:3
3 what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.

Implicit in the idea of fellowship is personhood. One cannot fellowship with an encyclopedia, or with a tree, or a wrench. Fellowship means to experience directly and intimately another person; God intends we should enjoy intimate communion with Him, not just know facts about Him. As the Christian has actual fellowship with God, their direct experience of Him deeply roots their faith, securing their fidelity to the Author and Finisher of their faith and making it possible for the believer to "stand firm." (John 16:13; John 14:26; 1 Corinthians 2:10-16; 2 Corinthians 1:3-5; Ephesians 3:16; Romans 8:13-14; Philippians 2:13; Galatians 5:22-23, etc.)

Paul's exhortation to "stand firm in the faith" is not, then, an appeal to the believer's strength of will, for the believer to grit their teeth in the winds of trial and persecution and just stubbornly refuse to be moved from their religious beliefs. No, Paul is actually enjoining the believer to know well the contents of their faith and to walk with God in daily, intimate communion with Him - the two things that are fundamental and vital to the establishment and perseverance of the Christian's faith.


Continued below.

 

[Tenchi]

"Act like men, be strong."

Surely, Paul here is appealing unabashedly to the personal strength, the resolve, of Christian men; he's saying that men are strong; that to be strong is to be manly. Many men – though, fewer today in North America perhaps than ever – hold to this conception of what it is to be a man. For such men, Paul's exhortation to "act like a man, be strong," is an obvious call to exertion of their physical power and internal fortitude. While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such exertions, if they replace the power of God at work in the Christian man (or woman), or are the first resort of the Christian person instead of God's infinite resources, such exertions fail to "be strong" in the way Paul means.

John 15:4-5
4 "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
5 "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

It’s hard, especially for many self-reliant, A-type believers, to humble themselves under the truth of their utter impotency to produce the life of Christ by their own efforts. But this impotency is a crucial truth of the Gospel and remains the basis from which the Christian person walks with God, looking constantly to Christ as Life itself, humbly dependent at all times upon Him for the wherewithal to be pleasing to Him (Colossians 1:15-19; 2:9-10; 3:4; John 14:6; John 1:4). So it is that Paul wrote:

Ephesians 6:10
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.

Paul's words here correspond to Christ's unequivocal assertion that without him we can do nothing. We cannot "act like men, be strong" in a way that honors God, that deepens our knowledge of, and communion with, Him by refusing to accept our profound human weakness. In his various letters to the Early Church, Paul often acknowledged this, locating the power source of Christian living in our holy Maker:

Philippians 1:6
6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

Philippians 2:13
13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

Philippians 3:3
3 for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh,

Philippians 4:13
13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

Colossians 1:29
29 For this purpose also I labor, striving according to His power, which mightily works within me.

Colossians 3:3-4
3 For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
4 When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

Romans 8:13
13 for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

And so on. It is in the light of these statements by Paul that his command to "act like men, be strong" is properly obeyed. He is not, in 1 Corinthians 16:13, urging Christians to resort to their own reserves of power in response to his command, but to remember their weakness and "be strengthened with all might by the Spirit in the inner man (Ephesians 3:16)

The means whereby the believer accesses the power of the Spirit, however, is submission, conscious and constant. It is no good pleading with God for His enabling power from a life that is not consciously and persistently yielded to Him as a "living sacrifice" (Romans 12:1). God does not fill up the believer with Himself who has regions of their life walled off from His control. And until the believer is filled with God, with the transforming and enabling power of His Spirit, they can only limp along, perennially stumbling and weak spiritually, caught in a never-ending, tight cycle of sin>confession>sin>confession.

There is no being strong in the Lord without first acknowledging one's total weakness; there is no going high with God until one has first gone low before Him; there is no victory without surrender.

All calls to righteous action in the NT, then, are not calls for the Christian to dredge up from within themselves, from their own human resources, the wherewithal to obey, but to "look unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith" (Hebrews 12:2), in submission to him, receiving, remaining in, and reflecting His work in us.

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
23 Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
24 Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.

 

[Christ_empowered]

Thank you. Quite thoughtful nuanced and based in Scripture.

 

[Tenchi]

Bump.

 

[Christ_empowered]

Hi

Ok I think…side note…that a lot of churches are failing to teach this. A lifelong Pentecostal literally said to me God helps those who help themselves. Mind.blown…

At a personal level I’m trying to look upwards and outward and I’m praying to abide in Him. In Him a believer will bear much fruit. Outside of Him…cut off for the burn pile.