Author: Jim Cantelon

February 8, 2021

So how are you doing 12 months into this COVID-19 era? If the media reports are anywhere close to the heart of the matter you’re not doing well. Infections and deaths increase every day, depression is up, divorce, thoughts of suicide, alcoholism climbing, disturbing increase of abused infants at emergency wards, sorrow on sorrow…we’re suffering a global pandemic of fear and sadness. This is no time for trite solutions. We’ve got to admit our lostness on a scale never before imagined. We need help. I was listening to one of the most loved hymns in history being...

Read 1 Corinthians 11

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 11:29 “For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.” The early Church used to meet for regular pot-luck dinners. They were called “agape” meals — “love-feasts”. Ideally they were supposed to include everyone and highlight no distinction between the well-to-do and the poorer believers. But here is what was happening: The upper-income believers were getting to the dinners before the lower-income workers. Rather than wait for their poorer brethren, these...

Read 1 Corinthians 10

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 10:13 “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” Why do you suppose Paul warns us about imminent failure just when we think we’ve got temptation beat? “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” he says. Would he prefer that we be insecure, lacking confidence and uncertain in our convictions? No. What he’s...

Read 1 Corinthians 8 & 9

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 9:22 “… I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” In so many ways the apostle Paul was way ahead of his time. You might even call him a “renaissance man”. He was remarkably free, and admirably mature. And he had absolutely no trace of superstition in his makeup. For instance, he had no problem eating food that had been offered to idols. Food was food and had no intrinsic moral value (8:8). But, if he was at table with former idolaters to whom meat offered to idols brought memories of pagan ritual, he was...

Read 1 Corinthians 7

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 7:29a, 31b “…the time is short…the form of this world is passing away.” I’d like to caution you before reacting to Paul’s apparently low view of marriage in this chapter. First of all, read 9:5, “Do we have no right to take along a believing wife, as do also the other apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas (Peter)?” Apparently, as he delineated the rights of apostles, Paul felt the need to defend his and the others’ right to take a wife along on missionary travels. Whether or not Paul actually did so remains...

February 3, 2021

Alms, Prayer, & Fasting 6:1-18 Our Father in Heaven v. 9 (Part 2) Jesus’ reference to God as Father would not have surprised his audience. In the Jewish scriptures God had claimed “Israel as his son…” (Ex. 4:22) and had blessed and chastened him time and again through out a tumultuous history. The use of the term was common in Jewish prayers, and even though these prayers and liturgies were usually expressed in the synagogues, the everyday Israelite had a sense that a Heavenly Father overshadowed his people with protective wings. “In Heaven” might just...

Read 1 Corinthians 5 & 6

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 6:12 “All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” Have you a pet sin? Once that’s been with you for years? Perhaps It’s relatively secret (apart from any “shared” sinning it may have precipitated with other secret partners). You’ve brought it to God many, many times, but it’s still there. You haven’t mastered it yet. In fact, if the truth were known, it has mastered you. When you read Paul’s words in the second...

Read 1 Corinthians 4

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 4:41 “My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. “ (NIV) Paul appears a touch arrogant here. “I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court,” he says. Not only does he have little regard for what people think of him, he doesn’t really care what he himself thinks of himself, “I do not even judge myself” (4:3). He refuses to succumb to false guilt. Psychology tells us there are two kinds of guilt: false guilt and true guilt. False guilt occurs when you accept the blame for not meeting the expectation...

Read 1 Corinthians 3

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 3:3 “For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?” That key verse begins (in the NIV), with, “You are still worldly” (carnal). And, if it were up to some of us to complete the verse we might say, “For where there are the wrong kind of music, sexual misdemeanours, and substance abuse among you, are you not worldly and behaving like sinners?” And there would be a lot of justification for us to think in those terms; after all, sin is sin. Paul, in fact, addresses these sins...

Read 1 Corinthians 1 & 2

Key Verse: 1 Corinthians 2;9 “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” “Pie in the sky when you die by and by.” That’s how the Christian hope is cynically described by those who have a low view of heaven. It’s easy, of course to make fun of adults who hope for a glorious future with God, just as it’s easy to make light of adults who believe in leprechauns or any other mythology. Why? Because heaven is not available to the senses. And in a world where the empirical...

January 27, 2021

Alms, Prayer, & Fasting 6:1-18 Our Father in Heaven v.9 Right off the top the pronoun puts things in perspective. There is no “I, me, or mine” . Rather it’s “we, us, and ours”. God is the Father of all, not a household deity. “Our” reminds us that we have no inside track to God peculiar to us but our access is shared by every man and woman of faith throughout history. Ours is a family faith. And, as his children’s we have the right to address our Heavenly Father as “Abba” (Hebrew). This is the equivalent of “Daddy” in...

Read Romans 16

Key Verse: Romans 16:22 “I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, greet you in the Lord.” Tertius? Who’s he? And Lucius, Jason, Sosipater, Gaius, Erastus, Quartus? Who are these people? Lucius, Jason, and Sosipater were relatives of Paul. Erastus was head of Rome’s public work department. Gaius was a local church member with the gift of hospitality. Quartus was simply a “brother” in the Lord. And Tertius? He was Paul’s secretary, the man who took dictation as Paul wrote this letter to the Romans. But they’re all “unknowns” as far as we’re...