The Greeting

 DEVOTION

THE1ST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS

THE GREETING

1 Cor 16:19-24

19 The churches in the province of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that meets at their house. 20 All the brothers here send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss. 21 I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand. 22 If anyone does not love the Lord — a curse be on him. Come, O Lord! 23 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. 24 My love to all of you in Christ Jesus. Amen.

NIV

It does seem sort of strange that this personal message of closing the letter is included. There has to be some value to us today for we know that all scripture is profitable in teaching, correcting, rebuking, and training us in righteousness. What can we learn from these final words? It appears everyone is weighing in on sending their greetings. It would seem this is one united church, but we know there were problems otherwise Paul would not have written this letter as it contains a whole lot of correcting of what was going on in the Corinth church. Still, we should always greet one another, even greet one another with a holy kiss. If we did that it would seem there would never be any problems in the church today. But the truth is there are problems in every church. Perhaps, we let our personalities get in the way. Maybe this self-centered culture of the world has infiltrated the church. Why do churches split? Why do portions of a congregation just leave when a new Pastor arrives? Why do people leave one local church and find another? There seem to be there are some issues that do not get resolved and yet how then do we greet one another with a holy kiss? Even in a local church that seems to stay the course and remain somewhat together, there may be underlying issues that prevent this holy kiss greeting. If we are to love each other, then it should never be a problem to greet one another but is our greeting a mere surface greeting. It is interesting the Greek word translated as greet has a direct meaning of enfolding one in our arms or to draw to oneself. It is used as a salute, welcome, and greet, but if we take that truer meaning, then it becomes far more personal than just saying hello, or good morning another believer. It is sort of like the difference between saying, “love ya” and “I love you”. The first is impersonal, even flippant in a way, none involved, but the second makes it personal, “I love you”. This is the holy kiss, it has to be up close and personal, drawing that other person to us, enfolding them in our arms, so to speak. It seems in the last year, this covid situation sure made it easier to simply keep our distance, and maybe we have been retrained or forgotten how to greet really greet each other. It would seem we need to get on with greeting.