The Apostle Paul Might Have Been Ace.

At least, that’s what he seems to tell the Corinthians.

Paul’s epistles are fascinating. Scratch that — Paul was fascinating. From the moment he first appears in the book of Acts, you get to follow him on a crazy roller-coaster of a life in Christ. Tricky for him, as Jesus had only just died, and no one was really solid on how to actually do the whole living in Christ thing. He and Peter butted heads over it in Galatians 2.

Both men found themselves in the difficult situation of relearning how to follow the whole new way of life Jesus Christ had laid out for them, and then teaching others how to do the same. Like, from the ground up. With no clear instructions beyond Matthew 22:37. Kudos on them, I suppose. It’s not like they set out to create the behemoth THE CHURCH has become.

But I got to thinking, and found myself inspired by the Holy Spirit to take a peek at scripture. I thought the plan was to wax poetic about Paul’s notion of a woman’s role in the body, but that is clearly a ham sandwich for another day. Instead, as I flipped to 1 Corinthians, I found something a bit more interesting…

When we mention 1 Corinthians, a very specific passage comes to mind almost at once. We universally recognize 1 Corinthians 13 as that one chunk of text we traditionally read at…