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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - 1 Corinthians 12:3 - 12:3
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Wherefore I give you to understand (dio gnōrizō humin). Causative idea (only in Aeschylus in old Greek) in papyri (also in sense of recognize) and N.T., from root gnō in ginōskō, to know.
Speaking in the Spirit of God (en pneumati theou lalōn). Either sphere or instrumentality. No great distinction here between laleō (utter sounds) and legō (to say).
Jesus is anathema (anathema Iēsous). On distinction between anathema (curse) and anathēma (offering, Luk 21:5) see discussion. In lxx anathēma means a thing devoted to God without being redeemed, doomed to destruction (Leviticus 27:28f.; Joshua 6:17; 7:12). See note on 1Co 16:22; note. on Gal 1:8; note on Rom 9:3. This blasphemous language against Jesus was mainly by the Jews (Act 13:45; Act 18:6). It is even possible that Paul had once tried to make Christians say Anathema Iēsous (Act 26:11).
Jesus is Lord (Kurios Iēsous). The term Kurios, as we have seen, is common in the lxx for God. The Romans used it freely for the emperor in the emperor worship. “Most important of all is the early establishment of a polemical parallelism between the cult of Christ and the cult of Caesar in the application of the term Kurios, ‘lord.’The new texts have here furnished quite astonishing revelations” (Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, p. 349). Inscriptions, ostraca, papyri apply the term to Roman emperors, particularly to Nero when Paul wrote this very letter (ib., p. 353f.): “One with ‘Nero Kurios’ quite in the manner of a formula (without article, like the ‘Kurios Jesus’ in 1Co 12:3.” “The battle-cries of the spirits of error and of truth contending at Corinth” (Findlay). One is reminded of the demand made by Polycarp that he say Kurios Caesar and how each time he replied Kurios Iēsous. He paid the penalty for his loyalty with his life. Lighthearted men today can say “Lord Jesus” in a flippant or even in an irreverent way, but no Jew or Gentile then said it who did not mean it.