Last week we were looking at one of the most famous passages in the New Testament and we discovered that chapter 13 is not just a beautiful poem about love, but rather a rebuke to Christians who were not loving each other. They were gifted, knowledgeable and very committed – just not very loving!

If we were to ask the lawyers among us, they would say that if we want to stay out of trouble, it is essential that we understand the meaning of the words we use. If we start signing contracts without understanding the words in those contracts, it won’t be very long before we find ourselves in the most appalling mess. It sounds so obvious, but I am not sure that it is, because the meaning of most words changes as a result of the way that they are used in everyday speech and that will change as society changes.

We live in an age when all the foundations of society which were accepted by our parents’ generation are being challenged. Everything that was held to be true about the family, about right and wrong and about human sexuality can apparently no longer be held out as normative in 21st century culture. In some countries it might even be a criminal offence to do so!

One of our goals here on a Thursday is to give you some idea of how each passage fits into the letter as a whole. At first sight, it seems as if Paul is introducing a completely new topic in chapter 12. Last week we were talking about the Lord’s Supper and now suddenly we are looking at spiritual gifts!

If we were to go out onto the streets of Cape Town this afternoon and do a survey asking people the question, “What is a Christian?” I wonder how many different replies we would get. In our day when people are pushing for religious tolerance to be enshrined in law, the definition of what a Christian is has become surprisingly broad and there is great confusion.

As a small boy growing up in the UK, my family were occasional churchgoers. Like many families who were Christians in name only, we went at Easter, Christmas and perhaps a handful of other occasions during the year. I remember very little about the services themselves, except for one thing. Those were just about the only times when my mother wore a hat. In fact, every lady in church wore a hat. At the time I had no idea why, but of course the origin of that very peculiar tradition was 1 Corinthians 11, dreadfully misapplied.

Last week, Paul took us into the athletics stadium and was describing the Christian life as a race, in which all the disciplines of the serious athlete are brought to bear for the sake of the gospel.

This week, he moves away from the athletics arena and draws us into the drama of a journey. This is not an imaginary journey, but a real journey, referred to in the Bible as the Exodus, in which God rescued Israel out of captivity in Egypt and led them through the desert towards the Promised Land.

The question I want us to try to answer this lunchtime is, “What makes a soul-winner?” Can we get to the core of why some people want to lead others to Christ, are excited and motivated by it and are apparently able to do it with almost no effort or strain, while others never really get started?

Context. Chapters 9 and 13 are the most frequently misunderstood chapters in the letter. Just as chapter 13 is not primarily a text about love for people to use at weddings, chapter 9 is not primarily a text about whether to pay the local pastor or not! Both passages, like every passage, need to be read in their context and applied accordingly. As we do that we will discover that this passage serves as a charter for the City Partnership in 2008.

One of the great joys of being a Christian is that we have a faith based on knowledge. In the sixty six books of the Bible, God has graciously provided all the knowledge we will ever need in order to have a relationship with Him. In the Bible, God tells us about Himself and His ways (Who He is, what He has done, what He is going to do in the future); and He tells us about ourselves (Who we are, why God made us, how we are to live in relationship with Him).