in a section that can at best be labeled as a warning. He uses harsh language: Watch out
for those dogs. Watch out for those evildoers. Watch out for those whackers.
Let me offer a second example from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. In
1 Corinthians 7, Paul starts answering questions that have come to him in a letter from the
Corinthian church, beginning with marriage issues. In 7:12
16 he deals with whether a
believer ought to remain married to an unbeliever; his next unit of answers to questions
from the Corinthians deals with virgins (beginning in 7:25). Note that one can jump from
1 Corinthians 7:16 to 7:25 and not miss any of Paul's basic answers to the sex and
marriage questions asked by the Corinthian church.
In the intervening verses (7:17
24), Paul works with a more general axiom:
Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord has assigned him and
to which God has called him. Yes, this section relates to the issue of mixed marriages,
but the specific examples Paul offers concern circumcision and slavery. There is, it is
true, some evidence that the Judaizers may have infiltrated the Corinthian church in the
so-called Peter party of chapter 1, though interestingly there are no references either to
peritomhv
or
douçlo^
anywhere in 1 Corinthians before chapter 7. So why does Paul
bring up these two examples here? Perhaps 1 Corinthians 7:23b gives a clue: You were
bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. The theme of this verse sounds
suspiciously like Galatians 5:1
2: It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm,
then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I,
Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you.
We know that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians from Ephesus not long after he had
visited the churches in Galatia, and presumably Paul had regular reports coming to him