1 Corinthians 16:22 Commentary and Bible Study

Here is a warning for us, ‘If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.’ ‘Let him be accursed’, says the first Aramaic word; says the second, ‘the Lord is here’. The KJV has not translated either of these two words, but brought them straight into English. The presence of these Aramaic words in a letter to Greek speaking Gentiles indicates that the words were in common usage among all Christians. The two words really need separating by some form of punctuation since they have very different meanings and are not intended to be joined together. Some would say that Maranatha is ‘the Lord is coming’, but it is ‘the Lord is here’ – ‘If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be cursed, the Lord is here.’ Here is the warning: if you don't love the Lord Jesus Christ, because you've never found him, and you are against him, and you intend to stay that way. Or you are a Christian, but somehow or other you have let your heart grow so cold and mechanical towards Christ, be careful. The Lord is here. You could be under punishment or judgement. The Lord sees; the Lord notes; the Lord observes the state of our hearts, that love isn't there, that it's grown cold. ‘If any man love not.’ Notice the full name and titles of Christ, and that instructs us. You have got to love him in all his names and titles. There were some people who were troublemakers in the church of Corinth; the minority who would not respond to Paul, and they would not respond to Timothy. It will become evident that they do not want the Lord, and they do not love him. They are simply carnal, fleshly hero-worshippers. And ultimately, they may have to go and be delivered up to the judgement of God.Discipline by exclusion from the church is a comparatively rare thing; indeed, we have found in this epistle that it is a very rare thing. It used to be much more common in Spurgeon’s time. But then people were pouring into the church and professing faith. And they came into membership, in certain years, by the hundreds. And although it is very sad, it is not surprising that you would find elders and members meetings having to exclude some people, quite frequently – people who were drunkards, people who were cruel to their wives, people who were adulterous, people who had stolen. And every month, through the great growth years of the church, there were people who had to be expelled. Now, we don’t have that vast scale of blessing today, and we don’t have that scale of problems that may go with it: people swept in by the tide of blessing, who do not really love the Lord Jesus. But they had it at Corinth.