Compensatory Honor

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“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)

The Basket Case Chronicles #149

For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked: That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another” (1 Corinthians 12:24–25).

So the body is naturally solicitous for the parts of the body that have less honor. There is a natural modesty we have, given by God, which causes us to compensate. The “comely parts” need no additional honor through clothing or jewelry, but other parts do. This giving of additional care to certain parts of the body is described as God “tempering the body together.”

When we do this, we are avoiding schism, he says, and the goal is for the different members of the body to have what he calls the “same care” for one another. And what he has described is a paradox. We provide one another with the same care by making sure we provide one another with different care. To recognize that some parts are less presentable enables you to cloth the congregation in such a way that the whole congregation is presentable. If you treat everyone exactly the same out of a false idea of “equality,” you are going to make the God-given inequalities worse. You want the whole thing to even out—and so some parts of the body are clothed and some parts are not.

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Mike Bull
10 years ago

WEIRD FACT #34598b Adam and Eve were created on Day 6. Mapping the Tabernacle furniture onto the Creation Week puts the Laver at Day 6. Mapping it onto Israel’s journey from Egypt to Canaan puts the water of Jordan and the sword of Jericho at “Day 6.” Mapping the Feasts onto it puts the Day of Coverings at “Day 6.” Since the Tabernacle is cruciform, and therefore humaniform, the clothing of Adam and Eve, the circumcision of “new Israel”, and the cutting off of Jericho all correspond to the area around Adam’s loins, “the Day of Coverings” — and uncoverings,… Read more »