Salvation Summaries

OVERVIEW OF BOOK

“Act your age!”  Was this ever mentioned to you when you were in junior high school, or high school?  Is it something you have said to another person…maybe a daughter or son?

In Paul’s book to the church in Corinth, he indicated that there are three kinds of people on this earth: believers (mature Christians), baby believers (infant Christians) and worldly unbelievers (unsaved people who belong to the world). The people he was writing to fell into the second category (baby believers), but were acting like those in the third (worldly unbelievers). In short, they weren’t acting like how they should have been acting, given that most of them were Christians.

The people in this church were experiencing a number of problems and had misunderstandings too, so Paul wrote this book to address these issues.  In terms of problems, Paul addressed their arguing (which was causing divisions within their church), arrogance, sexual immorality, worshiping of idols, abusive behavior, and the Lord’s Supper.  He also provided information on marriage, spiritual gifts and love.

There were two issues that really caught my attention when reading this book.

• One involves homosexuality, where Paul details the spiritual and physical problems associated with this lifestyle, and the consequence of it (those who practice homosexuality will not go to heaven).  Homosexuality is something I’ve written about before in my post on the book of Jude (March 2014), so you may want to take a quick look at that if you want to know more of what the Bible has to say on this issue.

• The other involves death, where Paul talks about how the bodies of believers will be raised and transformed into new spiritual bodies when they go to heaven.  I believe this topic is especially important to read for those who may embrace evolution, and believe that when a person dies, his/her body simply decays and that person exists no more (these people are only half right).

Although the chapter on love did not really stand out to me, as I’ve read it before, it is nonetheless a great one to read, as it shows – from a spiritual rather than a worldly standpoint – what true love is.

SALVATION VERSES

This book contains a half dozen or more verses that relate to salvation, and answers questions such as: What happens when a person becomes saved? How is a person saved? Is salvation a life long process? What happens to the body of a believer when he/she dies? And, will homosexuals go to heaven?

I plan to address the first three questions in my next blog, 1 Corinthians – Part 2 of 3, and the last two questions in Part 3 of 3.