“Stay alert, stand firm in the faith, show courage, be strong. Everything you do should be done in love.” 1 Corinthians 16:13-14 NASB.

Writing a study on verses 13 and 14 alone would be easy, but the biblical context is found in much deeper and far richer soil of the context of God’s Word. For this reason, I dare not write from a single verse of Scripture…ever. And neither is it wise to base your day of being ‘in Christ’ and meditate solely upon one Bible verse. Our God is far more inclined to bless as we listen to Him thoroughly.

“If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides in him and he in God. And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him. By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world.” 1 John 4:15-17 NASB.

“For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, namely, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.” Galatians 5:13-14.

Our righteousness and salvation has foundation in the love of God. John 3:16 begins with, “”For God so loved the world…” Our freedom as Believers begins here.

“ What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not! Do you not know that if you present yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching you were entrusted to, and having been freed from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness. (I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.) For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free with regard to righteousness. So what benefit did you then reap from those things that you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death. But now, freed from sin and enslaved to God, you have your benefit leading to sanctification, and the end is eternal life. For the payoff of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:15-23.

Paul reveals himself to be the professor of Biblical Theology of the Mediterranean world and beyond as his letter to the church in Rome unfolds. In I Corinthians the Apostle appears to be a pastor-teacher of a local church nearby. In Cornith he confronts a very divided and conflicted group of folks and in 2 Corinthians we see him as the pastor/teacher standing on the battlefield of spiritual warfare.

I Corinthians reminds us of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” just as Julia Warde Howe wrote speaking of the Conquering Lord, 

“I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps, They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel, Since God is marching on.”

(the word ‘contemner’ is defined by the 1828 Webster Dictionary as being, “One who contemns; a despiser; a scorner.” Or one who rebels against the king’s proclamation.)

From Scripture we find this background for the Battle Hymn of the Republic, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.” 1 Peter 3:10 NASB. And I will encourage you to read all of Chapter 3.

Now is the time ‘to move forward and upward’ and step into Paul’s 2nd letter to the Corinthian church. This is next in line and a continuance of the difficulty of Paul contending with spiritual warfare. 

Jesus is Lord.