No letter in the NT deals so forcibly with local church problems, and perhaps no NT letter is more neglected today.

In December 2004, a single question from a young soldier touched off a media firestorm. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had come to deliver a pep talk to the troops at Camp Buehring in Kuwait. But the usually unflappable secretary found himself blindsided by a bold query. As news cameras rolled, Army Specialist Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team asked Rumsfeld, “Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?”

Specialist Wilson clearly felt he was being sent into battle without proper protection. As Christians, however, we shouldn’t have that fear. Our Supreme Commander generously equips us with the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit.

But it’s up to us to put them on and put them to use.

Today Corinth is a small town with little significance other than historical. But in New Testament times it was a thriving, prosperous, and strategically located city.

Paul was not among the original apostles, all of whom had been disciples of Jesus during His earthly ministry. He was not among the five hundred other believers who had seen the resurrected Christ. Rather, he had for many years been an unbeliever and a chief persecutor of the church.

every true believer in Jesus Christ—whether faithful or unfaithful, well known or unknown, leader or follower—is a set apart person, a holy person, a saint. In the biblical sense, the most obscure believer today is just as much a saint as the apostle Paul.

Now to make friendship there will be not only mutual love, delight, and converse, but friends must have harmony of thought. I will not say identity, for man and man must always be two, and Christ and his people, though one in some respects, are two existences.

Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people.

Bayer Corporation has stopped putting cotton wads in its aspirin bottles. The company realized the aspirin would hold up fine without the maddening white clumps, which it had included since about 1914.

“We concluded there really wasn’t any reason to keep the cotton except tradition,” said Chris Allen, Bayer’s vice president of technical operations. “Besides, it’s hard to get out.”

Likewise, long-standing traditions in the church can also be more annoying than helpful.

“Let us consider” other believers and, by our example, encourage them to be true to Christ. If we provoke each other at all, it should be unto love (see 1 Cor. 13:5).

It seems that these believers, because of trials, were neglecting Christian fellowship and the mutual encouragement that believers need from each other.

When we see ourselves as “pretty good,” we misunderstand the gravity of sin and our desperate need for grace. We place ourselves above others, become their judges, and give them the power to disappoint us.

A physicist friend uses this analogy: Each of us is like a lightbulb. One shines with fifty watts of holiness, another has only twenty-five watts. Maybe the most stellar Christians are two hundred watts. But these comparisons become trite in the presence of the sun.

In the face of God, our different levels of piety are puny and meaningless. It makes no sense to compare ourselves with one another, because we are all much more alike than we are different.

We need grace every day of our lives. The grace of yesterday will not suffice for today. We need to go to God morning by morning, to draw down from above by meditation and prayer supplies of grace to start the day aright.