from God. This is an important truth. There are many people who know Christ and yet are constantly discouraged because of their pat tern of life. I am not suggesting that they should not be discour aged, but simply pointing out that in Christ they are special people, and they must keep in mind that no matter how poor their conduct is as Christians, the grace of God is sufficient. Now, not only are these individ uals blessed as recipients of Cod's favor or God's grace through Christ, verse five says they are enriched. "In everything ye are enriched by Him." We pointed out in our first study on I Corinthians that the people at Corinth had a real prob lem with materialism. The pres sures of their society kept their eyes on material things. We too are brainwashed. We often think that real satisfaction is found in things. We may even thumb through our Bibles looking for verses that prom ise to the faithful more money, a nicer home, or greater business success. That is the timeless con cept of "what is in it for me?" But notice the Biblical phrase again, "That in everything ye are enriched by Him." We are enriched by God. The concept is not tied to material gain. The favors of God are far greater than just material good. If we truly want to be satis fied, we must recognize our basic needs. And, I suspect, your basic needs are not really tied to mate rial goods. For example, if you pur chase a new car with the idea that it will bring satisfaction in the im portant areas of life that is wrong. The luster of that new automobile will soon wear off. Very quickly, in fact, you will be back in the same
rut of dissatisfaction. You have mis judged your need from the stand point of what really brings the foundation for joy and satisfaction in life. The void in our lives can only be properly and satisfactorily filled by Cod's gift of eternal life. As Christians we tend to forget this. We turn away from the spiritual blessings and become wrapped up in a materialistic society. We are confident that if we can just buy that new suit of clothes we will be satisfied. But we find that that is not enough and we have to have more. Paul had a word for this dis ease. We will look at it later on, but it depicts the Corinthians in satiable desire to add more and bigger things to their possessions. It is a disease that gnaws at a per son. Once you start on this track there can be no satisfaction. What a marvelous antidote is the phrase "enriched by Him." We have, in our English language, the words, "plutocrat," and "plutoc racy." A plutocracy is a society that is controlled by those of wealth: a plutocrat is simply a man who is wealthy. The Greek word that is used here for enriched is the word plutocrat: the English language merely adopted at face value the Greek word. In everything then, we are made rich by Him, we are wealthy, we have substance. What a tonic for the Corinthians and those who suffer from the same ill ness today. In Christ we are pluto crats, not because we have a large bank account, but because we are blessed by God. Now then, in which way are these people blessed? Verse five says, "In all utterance and in all knowledge." There are a variety of ways in which a person can look at
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