If you have ever traveled to a different country, or to a different culture, you know one thing: a new environment changes more than your scenery. The experience changes you.

Instead of longing to sleep in late, you find yourself being an early riser. Instead of driving around town, you walk — even distances you would never dream of traveling on foot in your hometown. The new environment brings out new behaviors, new attitudes, and cuts new channels of perspective.

In this week’s epistle text Paul reminds his Corinthian audience that they are followers of Christ. As followers of Jesus, they now inhabit a new place, a new relationship, a new reality. Paul begins by offering one of the most compact versions of the gospel ever written: “one has died for all” (v.14). That sacrificial act, an…