Bible Study on 1st Corinthians Session 38

Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians

A Bible Study Based upon the Homilies of St John Chrysostom (SJC)

Study Guide – April 16, 2024 – 1st Corinthians 14.34-40  Session 38 – Homily 37

Prayer before reading of the Holy Scriptures: Shine within our hearts, loving Master, the pure light of Your divine knowledge, and open the eyes of our minds that we may comprehend the message of Your Gospel. Instill in us also reverence for Your blessed commandments so that, having conquered sinful desires, we may pursue a spiritual life, thinking and doing all those things which are pleasing to You. For You, Christ our God, are the light of our souls and bodies, and to You we give glory, together with Your Father who is without beginning and Your all holy, good and life giving Spirit, always now and forever and to the ages of ages.

TEXT ANALYSIS

Section [1]

  1. The women were causing chaos by speaking without purpose – SJC he next in course proceeds to the disorder which arose from the women, cutting off their unseasonable boldness of speech: and that very opportunely. For if to them that have the gifts it is not permitted to speak inconsiderately, nor when they will, and this, though they be moved by the Spirit; much less to those women who prate idly and to no purpose.
  2. There is actually no Old Testament Law against women speaking in Church – SJC And where does the law say this? Your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you. Genesis 3:16 
  3. Women are not the only ones with limitations – SJC And if this be so in respect of husbands, much more in respect of teachers, and fathers, and the general assembly of the Church.
  4. Husbands benefit as much a their wives because they are required to bring the truth home – SJC Here you see why he set over them their husbands as teachers, for the benefit of both. For so he both rendered the women orderly, and the husbands he made anxious, as having to deliver to their wives very exactly what they heard.
  5. Saint Paul’s teaching is consistent with the other Churches to help the Corinthians not feel targeted and therefore accept his teaching – SJC Thus he brings in the other Churches also as holding this law, both abating the disturbance by consideration of the novelty of the thing, and by the general voice making his saying acceptable.
  6. Saint Paul included women speaking as part of his teaching on tongues and prophecy showing all together this about order and benefit in the Church – SJC For this too is his wont, not only to work out what is before him, but also starting from that to set right whatever seems to him in any way akin to it, and again to return to the former, so as not to appear to wander from the subject.

LIFE APPLICATION: Everything is all about proper order in the Church

Section [4]

  1. Nothing is more destructive than disorder – SJC Again giving a blow to them who chose to behave themselves unseemly without cause, and to incur the imputation of madness; and who keep not their proper rank. For nothing does so build up as good order, as peace, as love; even as their contraries tend to pull down. And not only in things spiritual, but also in all others one may observe this. 
  2. Passions take over when order ends – SJC Neither let us then destroy our order, nor place the head below and the feet above:  now this is done when we cast down right reason, and set our lusts, passions, and pleasure, over the rational part: whence violent are the billows, and great the confusion, and intolerable the tempest, all things being wrapt in darkness.
  3. Only self-control brings pleasure – SJC And where the waves and tempest are so great, what pleasure can there be? There is not any; but tumult, and anguish, and black clouds which instead of rain bring great sorrow of heart: the kind of thing which is wont to happen in the case of those who are enamoured of beauty not their own. Wherefore they who have no passionate love at all are in more pleasure than any lovers.
  4. There is greater pleasure in restraint – SJC But to me even he who loves, but restrains his passion, seems to live more pleasurably than he who continually enjoys his mistress.
  5. Self-control and order lead to heaven – SJC And these things have been said by us, as one would speak discoursing with licentious youths, who do not very patiently submit to hear our discourses of the kingdom and of hell. And now that we are bringing forward these topics also, it is not even possible to say how great is the pleasure of the continent; if one frame in one’s own mind his crowns, his rewards, his converse with the angels, the proclaiming of him before the world, his boldness, those blessed and immortal hopes of his.
  6. SJC gets down to their level to raise them up. Sexual passions are the most base of all passions – SJC If I have spoken these things more plainly than is becoming, let no man blame me. For I desire not to make a brave show by a gravity of words, but to make my hearers grave. Therefore also the prophets spare no such words, wishing to extirpate the licentiousness of the Jews, but do even more nakedly inveigh against them than we do now in the things we have spoken. For so a physician wishing to remove an ulcer does not consider how he may keep his hands clean, but how he may rid the patient of the ulcer; and he who would raise on high the lowly, first makes himself lowly; and he who seeks to slay the conspirator stains himself with blood as well as the other, and this makes him the more brilliant.
  7. It is madness to focus on passions – SJC For what do you consider the moment of pleasure? That before the criminal action? Nay, it is not so, for it is a time of madness and delirium and frenzy: to grind the teeth and be beside one’s self is not any pleasure: and if it were pleasure, it would not produce the same effects on you which they who are in pain endure.

SEND OFF! Seek self-control over pleasure

Since then this man’s life is more in pleasure, while the life spent in love of pleasure is in dejection and disquiets; let us flee from licentiousness, let us keep hold on continence, that we may also obtain the good things to come.