That Ye May Be Blameless
1 Cor. 1:1-9
1 Paul, called as an apostle of Christ Jesus by God’s will, and our brother Sosthenes: 2 To God’s church at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus and called as saints, with all those in every place who call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord--theirs and ours. 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 I always thank my God for you because of God’s grace given to you in Christ Jesus, 5 that by Him you were made rich in everything--in all speaking and all knowledge-- 6 as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, 7 so that you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. 8 He will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful; by Him you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Prayer
I can not number the times that I have caught students red handed doing something and the very first word out of their mouths are I did not do it. Some have such guilty conciseness that when you call their name and they were not paying attention they will say I did not do it. Parents will come to school now and basically call the teacher a liar saying my child would not do something like that. You are wrong my Child would not do that. Can you prove he cheated, even though the teacher saw it with their own eyes, they can not accept that their child has done something wrong. I even have had one to say it is just your word against his. My answer has always been something like this “You can believe your child all you want and refuse to see the truth. You may even defend your child blindly refusing that your child can commit a sin but the brutal honest truth is this, it does not matter what he says or you say in my classroom what matters is what I say. I know what I saw and I know what the punishment will be because your child will be held accountable for his actions.”
Do we not do something similar with God? Don’t we run, hide, and refuse to accept that we are sinners? Don’t we want to refuse to accept the blame for our actions? Lord I did not do that so and so made me do it. And God says I know what I say with my eyes and you will be held accountable for your actions. God says my room, my rules, my eyes, and my judgment. The Corinthians here were having problems. Divisions had begun to develop in this church and Paul was writing them to help guide them back to the center of God’s will. Let us take a look at what Paul is saying in these 1st nine verses.
First Paul gives he credentials. He is saying look “ I am called to be an apostle by Jesus Christ”. Okay here are my diploma, my certificate of authority, and my source of authority. I am not writing you just as Paul who is nosy but instead I am writing you as Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ, Chosen by him to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. I am writing you not in my own power but in the power of Jesus Christ. I am writing you to remind you of your first love Jesus Christ. Today Paul is still writing to the Gentiles and he is still trying to remind us who our first love is.
Have you been feeling distanced from God. Does is seem like He is not as close as He once was or you don’t think of Him as often as you once did. If so then you are like the Corinthians here they had let the world block their view of Jesus Christ. Petty things had become more important and Paul was reminding them just as he reminds us who we are actually living for.
Then after Paul reminds them who he was he reminds them of who they are. They are called to be saints. You and I are called to be saints. Servants of the living God. Servants of our Savior who took on the form of man, who bore our sins on the cross, who died to pay our sin debt and then rose again on the 3rd day. We are his not this old worlds and because of this our thinking needs to be different than this worlds. I don’t know about you but I have to pause here for a moment and rearrange my thinking. How refreshing is it to be reminded exactly who and what I am. Today far to many people ignore the daily reading of God’s word and they lose that reminder of who the are. You see, if we are to become more Christ like every day then we must get to know him by studying his word. We need to know how HE thinks and to do this we need to know His word because that is how He thinks. For us to become Christ like just does not happen at the snap of the fingers what it takes is studying the word of God, communicate with God in prayer, and strive to take what God teaches and apply it to our lives so that each and every day we become more Christ like.
Now once Paul reminds the Corinthians and us that we are saints then we can begin to understand the next verse. God’s grace is on us because He sent His son to die for us. Without that grace we would not be saved but be condemned to an eternity to hell. Because of this grace we can have peace given to us from God our Father and from Jesus Christ. This peace is the knowledge that we are saved from Hell and are co-inheritors with Jesus Christ in Heaven.
Paul is reminding us that we don’t need to be running around like a bunch of frightened chickens after seeing a fox. We know through the peace that the Father provides that Jesus Christ is in control. There should be no arguments between brother and sister because we have Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. You know the only times we seem to disagree is when we become so worldly that we forget who is actually in control. Have you ever noticed that after a beg blow up and everyone has refocused on Christ how silly all the fighting was. That all we had to remember, like the verse says, that Jesus Christ is in each of us and He is the one ultimately in charge.
What about you? Do you let Jesus Christ have total control of do you hold on to something? I want you to understand not a single one of us from me the Pastor on down to Lilly Grace is more important than the next. Jesus is in each and everyone of us. He has given each of us physical as well as spiritual gifts. Not a one of us here is more important than the next. We all are equal. God has a plan for each of us and every one of us has a testimony, we don’t need to hide it. The world needs to, no it must see that testimony in us. Paul reminds us that not only are we purchased by Jesus’ blood from the slave market of sin but He has taken up residence in our hearts. Can you feel Him today or have you cluttered your heart up with so much junk that Jesus is living in a very tiny corner in the attic. Does your heat ache today? Do you want to allow Him total reign over your life today? This is what Paul is reminding us about.
We need to be true servants because Jesus is confirming us unto the end so that we may be blames on that day of judgment. But will we truly be blameless? Jesus has done everything for us. We have nothing to do for our salvation. All the work has been done. But we are called to be servants. We are called to e laborers. We slide our feet and hide, But the sad truth is this we are lazy. We have our salvation so we don’t need to work. To be faithful and study God’s word would cause us to realize that as faithful servants we have duties to perform.
God is faithful. He keeps His promises to us no matter what, so what about us are just as faithful? The example is there are we going to follow it.
