Living our Call
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
We all wish our churches were perfect. We all wish we were perfect. We often get discouraged by the failure to reflect Christ. We see our failings at every level and wonder when we will be the Church and when we will be true Christians. We tend to think of Peter and Paul as some sort of superheroes. They are shown in Scripture to have dismally failed just like us. Corinth was no perfect church either. The Bible is transparent about human failure. But it is just as transparent about God’s sovereignty and purpose. In the end, all will be well, not because of who we are, but because of who God is.
The Bible says the Scripture was written for our instruction as well as to give us hope. So let us not look into the introduction of Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians.
Paul had heard of the problems the Church of Corinth was having. He felt it urgent to write them while he was in Ephesus. He had founded the church several years earlier. Apollos had followed afterward and was a great teacher and apologist for the faith. He confronted the opposition of Jews in the city to the church. There is no mention of Peter having visited. He was called in this epistle by his Aramaic name Cephas which indicates that there was an element of church members who clung to Judaism and fekt that this was the proper expression of Christianity. In other words, the church was a mess.
Paul had to think how to address this situation. He uses a little more tact in addressing them. He does not tear into them directly. He starts on a positive note. He identifies with them as fellow brothers. He would soon chastise them severely, but he felt it necessary to lay a proper foundation first.
One idea which stands out in this passage is “calling.” This is seen in the very first verse in Paul saying that he “was called to be an apostle.” This statement is his claim of authority over the church at Corinth. When one reads 1 Corinthians, it does not take long to see that the church was divided as to the question of authority. Four groups are mentioned, followers of Paul, followers of Cephas (Peter), followers of Apollos, and followers of Christ. They did not see that authority properly comes from God. Paul and Apollos were merely the servants of the true authority which comes from God. The church was not Paul’s idea. Being an apostle was not Paul’s idea. Paul’s authority was derived from God who had called him to the office.
Paul says that those in Corinth are “called saints.” They had been set apart (sanctified). The word “church” also derives from the verb of calling. God had chosen them for a special purpose. Paul will have to deal with the fact that the church was not acting out this calling very well. He needs to address their errors and misconceptions. We tend to look at the word “saints” as being very holy people who serve as an example for us to follow. This description would hardly describe the Corinthians. All too often, it does not describe us very well either. In Catholic and Orthodox churches, they have a special group of these saints whom the church thinks did works above and beyond the call of duty. The truth is that, at best, they were just doing what all Christians are called to do. The Corinthians had no excess of merit to share with us. Like us, they all needed grace and help.
We should properly look at words like “holy,” “saints” and “sanctified” as meaning called apart. This echoes the idea of “chosen people” we see in the Old Testament. A lot of them weren’t too holy either. Israel was called out of Egypt to be a special people just like the Corinthians, and us as well. God has a purpose for His people to fulfill. The Old Testament “Assembly of the LORD” (Qahal-Adonai) is translated in Greek as ecclesia, which is translated “church.”
The church which consist of people who are called out, call upon the name of the LORD wherever they are on this earth. God’s people are not limited to one church and location like Israel was one camp in the wilderness. But they together make up one people of God, one church. The same is true on the local church level as well. The local church is to be united to the LORD and not divided over its differences so long as they are faithful to the teaching of the Scripture. There are false teachers which creep into the churches. Many have been ruined by them. But the divisions here were more about personalities than content. Peter, Paul and Apollos taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Paul begins his instruction with a greeting to the church and a prayer for grace and peace. This is what God desires in the church. The Corinthians, and we, need to measure our church situations in light of this statement of God’s will. Do we reflect this reality? Paul wishes this was the case n Corinth and knows that the church was not reflecting either very well. They are to adjust their behavior to what God has ordained the Church to be. He has provided every spiritual gift necessary to achieve this purpose. The Corinthians lacked nothing here. But as we shall see, the gifts which were meant to build up the church, were being misused for selfish purposes. So the fault lies squarely with the church when if fails to be what God says the church is.
God is faithful, even when we are not. Verse 9 says He has called us into fellowship in His Son, Jesus Christ. The word for fellowship in Greek means “to hold in common.” But how do we have fellowship with Jesus? Are we a bunch of individuals who have a one-on-one relationship with Jesus? Is the only thing in the church that holds us together is that we are a group of people holding a common goal? Is it just the fact we all want to go to heaven? Do we have any responsibility to each other? Some of the people in the church John wrote 1 John to seemed to hold to this opinion. There was a certain group of elitists who thought themselves morally and intellectually superior to the rest. They thought that others in the church were holding them back from progressing. So they left and formed their own group. They left the others to fend for themselves. John sharply condemns these elitists. They weren’t the “enlightened ones “at all. They weren’t even Christians! When they left the body, they proved this. They were acting like Cain who did not care the least about his brother. They were trying to spiritually murder their “inferiors.” James uses the example of Cain to address this as well. The one’s who were “in Christ” were in Christ because they fellowshipped together in the church.
As factions were threatening the church at Corinth, Paul writes 1 Corinthians to show them that they needed to come together in unity rather than in cliques. What united the church, faith in Jesus, was far more important that the petty divisions. Paul will start addressing all these issues in the rest of the letter. But instead of tearing into them, he begins by stating God’s purpose for the Church. We are to be what God says that we are. Now that we have been told what God wants, the behavior can become correct.
Christianity today is fractured into many schisms. Perhaps some of these are necessary because a particular denomination has failed to uphold the truth of the Gospel. It seems hard to have fellowship with a church which denies the authority of Scripture, the sovereignty of God, the Virgin Birth, and other such heresies. From such, the Christian needs to separate. But there are also many divisions among those who hold to the essential doctrines of the Gospel, which has been called “the fundamentals” by some like R.A. Torrey. We are divided at the communion table and how we administer baptism. Paul addresses both of these in 1 Corinthians. The very symbols of our unity and fellowship divide Christian from Christian. Paul’s approach in Corinthians could be expressed by the Reformation voice: “In essentials, unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things love.” We struggle for a common faith with content rather a empty faith in nothing. This is the matter that is killing the United Methodist Church today. The two factions hold nothing in common as far as the faith is concerned. But “nothing” has a dictionary definition; therefore, it is something. We are united by this common nothing. Or fellowship needs to be with the Father and the Son, or it is no fellowship at all.
I think that Christians in other denominations are equally perplexed and divided. It is time for Christians to come out from denominations who have apostate from the faith and join together in common. Paul tells us what does Christ and Belial have in common? One cannot belong to Christ and Belial. One cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. Paul even said that one man had to be separated from the fellowship, at least for a while, for egregious conduct. God help us when to stand and when to show some tolerance for differences of opinion. Amen.
