You think the year 2008 was filled with highly charged political debate? Forget it. That was nothing compared to the heated battles that kept tempers taut between Jews, Christians, and Gentiles in the first century.

The key issue of these debates? Nothing less than the requirements necessary for salvation. As the most outspoken Christian apostle to the Gentile community, Paul was on the front lines of every battle, every skirmish, every fracas fought between and among the Jewish/Christian/Gentile faithful in these earliest years of the church.

In many ways 1 Corinthians stands as a kind of first-century template for every religious debate that has transpired since in the ensuing two millennia. Paul’s argument in today’s text extends the point he had been making since the beginning of the …