Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
The people in Corinth were wealthy, busy, and cultured, and many were educated, but they were obsessed by sensual pleasure. There was even a temple devoted to sensual pleasure as a religion, with (it is reported) 1,000 girls and women serving as temple prostitutes, and men as well. A huge city of 600,000 people, like a modern New York, London, Tokyo, or San Francisco. Even today the exact same problems of money and sensual pleasure obsess people. And they are both cruel deceptions, for neither can satisfy the deep longings in the human heart.
Do you hunger for money and wealth? You are looking for heaven on earth, and you won't find it here--only disappointment. Do you hunger for human love? This is a natural, God-given hunger. But you won't find its satisfaction in sensual pleasure; all you'll get is a momentary thrill and an empty sense of guilt and self-condemnation afterwards.
What you hunger for is the real thing--which is genuine love. And that is the love of Christ. Paul discovered that the love of Christ was the answer to the heart-cry of Corinth. He said, "The message of the cross ... is the power of God. ... I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified" (1 Cor. 1:18; 2:2).
The people saw themselves on that cross with Jesus; He was not only dying in their place, He was dying as them; they identified with Him. The revelation of that love as agapeproved to be the only medicine that could heal human hearts and souls poisoned with the disease of sensuality. That love, agape, conquers sin at its deepest roots.
The Bible says you get it by looking--in other words, opening your eyes. "Behold! [Take a good long look at] The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29). You think that's too simple? Well, it does take time. You must take time to "look."
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: January 6, 1998.
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