1 Corinthians 1
1Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
2To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours:
3Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thanksgiving
4I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge— 6because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. 7Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.
Dig Deeper
A friend of mine recently became engaged. Everyone who knew him, knew that it was coming. Why? It was because you couldn’t have a conversation with him without hearing the name of his now-wife several times. She was at the center of his thoughts all of the time. This is the sort of thing going on with Paul here. In the first nine verses of his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul mentions Jesus Christ nine separate times. He is at the center of everything that Paul does. This is a good thing to keep in mind, because without that understanding, this letter can come across rather argumentative or bossy. The fact is, though, that Paul was motivated by Jesus Christ in every thought, word, and action, and he wants the Corinthians to be that way too.
Paul knows what it means to be in Christ and to be part of the resurrected life of Christ both in the present age and in the age to come. The church in Corinth was a young and immature group of Christians that no doubt passionately loved God but didn’t yet know how to live the life of Christ that they had entered. Throughout this letter, Paul will patiently explain to them the meaning of their life in Christ and how the gospel of the resurrection directly affects that life. To fully understand Paul’s arguments throughout this letter, we have to remember that Paul is so motivated by Jesus Christ because he knows that the resurrection of the Messiah is the very heart of his message. The declaration that the Son of God had defeated death and risen from the dead was Paul’s gospel (Rom. 1:3-4; 1 Cor. 15:1-9; Col. 1:23; 2 Tim. 2:8). If they are to live the life of Christ to the full then they needed to understand the full meaning of the resurrection in the present and in the future. Only then could they embrace the life of Christ to which they were called.
Most of the Corinthians were not Jews, they were Gentiles. They did not understand what it meant to have God as the very center of every area of their lives. They were living a different story without the understanding that they were being swept up into the new narrative of what God was doing in the world through his new assembly of ‘called out ones’ (which is what is meant by ekklesia or the word ‘church’ in v. 2). He calls them the church of God rather than the church of Corinth, reminding them to whom the assembly belongs. Paul wants the Corinthians to understand that Jesus is shaping them into a new sort of community, a new sort of people, and in order to become that new type of people, they must learn to have Jesus at the very center of their life and thinking, the way Paul does. From the onset, then, Paul stresses two important things about being a Christian: it involves being set apart and it involves being a part of a group created by God that extends beyond their local congregation. It is worth noting that we must understand this as a letter from Paul to them, first and foremost. It is not a letter directly written to us. When we have that proper understanding, then we can begin to learn the timeless truths for ourselves that Paul was teaching the Corinthians.
Paul sets all this up in verse 1 by reminding the readers that he is an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God. Apostle means ‘one who is sent’. Everything that he wants for them is a result of his being sent directly by Jesus. This calling did not come from his own will or sense of vocation, but from the will of God. He has been sent to help them to learn how to put Jesus at the center of their lives. He tells them in verse 2 that they are called to be holy, literally ‘set apart’. They have become part of God’s new story. He also wants them to see that they are but one part of that grand story. They are being joined together with God’s children everywhere to take part in this incredible new work of God, that of crafting a holy and sanctified people that will represent Him to the world. The only thing necessary for entry into this people is to call upon the name of the Lord, a typical early Christian phrase denoting God’s grace given out at the time of their baptism, which for Paul, was the time when one entered into the life of Christ, an extremely important concept for Paul to which he will appeal time and again in calling on them to conform to the life that they had been given in Christ.
Paul begins his letter (most ancient letters began with a greeting and a thanksgiving) by thanking God for the work he has already done in them. He also reminds them that the grace they have experienced is only available as a result of Jesus Christ coming into the world. One cannot separate the grace of God, shown to man, from the work and person of Jesus Christ. The practical result of this grace was that they had become a community that was growing in their speech and their knowledge. They had become a community of learners and had been confirmed as such by the fact that they had been given every sort of spiritual gift. So much so, as we will see, that the possession of these gifts had come to cause a problem.
That discussion will come in due time. For now Paul reminds them that Jesus will keep them strong to the end. He had called them in the past, would sustain them in the present, and will complete his work in the future. The present sign of that future promise is the incredible fellowship that they now share with other believers in Jesus Christ. They had become, in many ways, more interested in their own lives and desires than in living the life of Christ rooted firmly in a proper understanding of the resurrection of Christ and those in him. Paul wants his beloved children in Christ to realize that they don’t need to grasp after extra spiritual experiences, pleasures of the world, or anything else, because they have everything they will ever need in the life of Christ. In the present age, they have every spiritual blessing available to them in the life of Christ. They have the resurrected life of Christ, one that will anticipate and guarantee their place in the resurrection in Christ in the age to come. God has called them into this life, this fellowship, and so they can rest assured that God will do everything in His power to keep them faithful to that life. That doesn’t mean that Paul believes that they cannot become faithless and leave that life, but rather that they can rest assured that God will provide them in Christ with all of the strength they need to remain faithful to the end.
Devotional Thought
In writing this letter, Paul realized that what he would be telling the Corinthians would become a part of the work that God was doing in sustaining them, bringing the work he had begun in them to completion. The letter itself was a part of the process. In reading this letter now, we must realize that this letter will become part of the process through which God shapes and molds us into his people of ‘called out ones’. The key to allowing Scripture to have its full effect on us is to become what we read, not just to read it. We must let the words of God transform us as we meditate on it. Make a determination that you will read this letter with such a goal. Pray each day that God will use the words of this letter to transform you into the type of person and a part of the type of community that he desires.
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